A previously unpublished and unproduced early play by Tennessee Williams will be performed the Alley Theatre in Houston in 1997.

The play, Not About Nightingales, will have its premiere as part of a co-production deal between the Alley Theatre and London's Moving Theatre. Vanessa and Corin Redgrave, artistic directors of Moving Theatre, appeared in a repertory of two Shakespeare plays recently at the Alley.

Alley founder Margo Jones was an early booster of Williams' and directed the Broadway premiere of The Glass Menagerie, but it was Moving Theatre that acquired the rights to the play.

Not About Nightingales, written by Williams in 1938, is about injustices at a Southern prison, and reflects a social consciousness that he rarely explored overtly in his later plays.

Alley spokesman Andrew Huang said the play will be rehearsed in London, but it has not yet been decided whether the play will premiere in London or Houston, or whether either of the Redgraves would appear in it..