Moisés Kaufman’s adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ unproduced screenplay, ONE ARM, was presented in workshop production at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in December 2004.  ONE ARM was a co-production between Tectonic Theater Project, Steppenwolf and About Face Theatre.

Tennessee Williams wrote the short story ONE ARM in 1946, at the same time he was writing The Glass Menagerie, and adapted it as a screenplay in the 1960s.  The central character in the story is Ollie, a male hustler who is arrested for murder, and the nature of the material made it impossible to produce as a film, despite Williams’ repeated efforts to make it happen.  The workshop production of ONE ARM was an experiment designed to explore what would happen if a theater company invited an audience to imagine the film that might have been.  It is not quite a play and certainly not a movie.

ONE ARM opened to excellent reviews in Chicago, and Tectonic plans to present it in New York following a second regional production.