Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), better known by the nickname Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright of the twentieth century who received many of the top theatrical awards for his work. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee," the state of his father's birth. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In addition, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and The Night of the Iguana (1961) received New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo (dedicated to his lover, Frank Merlo), received the Tony Award for best play.

Summer and Smoke is a 1948 play by Tennessee Williams, originally entitled Chart of Anatomy when Williams began work on it in 1945. In 1964, Williams revised the play as The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.

The play tells the story of a lonely, unmarried minister's daughter (Alma Winemiller) who is courted by her childhood love, a wild, undisciplined doctor (Dr. John Buchanan, Jr.).