I just found this on Tamara’s Youtube channel. It’s a video of some of the major parts of Tamara’s play TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER that she did a couple of years back. Here she plays the part of Woman in this amazing production. She’s all sex and seduction with a good heaping helping of carnality in how she delivers her lines. What I’d kill to see is a production of another Tennessee Williams’ play “Cat on the Hot Tin Roof” with Tamara as Maggie the Cat, then with actor Treat Williams in a production of “Streetcar Named Desire”. Williams (no relation to the playwright) appeared in a stage version of it then went on to do a filmed for television version with Ann Margaret as Blanche DuBois. Tamara would fit both roles of Blanche and Maggie quite well.
Category: Woman
As promised, I have a couple of press additions for you. the first is an article Tamara did back in April 2012 from Soap Opera Digest where she discusses her magical time with preparing for her play Tennessee In The Summer, plus her meeting President and Michelle Obama at the White House, her attending the Kennedy Center Honors and the Grammys. She also talks with pride about her grandfather. The other article is from ABC Soaps In Depth from this past July where she talks solely about her role in the play. Enjoy.
To Come: Tamara’s screencaps from her DAYS work as Taylor Walker.
I’ve been extremely remiss at getting these up. It seems whenever I’ve gone to I’ve gone a little blonde and forgotten what I was going to do. So I finally have remembered. One of TAMARA OBSCURA‘s long time visitors and commenters has graciously given me permission to post a couple of pictures of her and Tamara. Noreen Smith went to see Tamara’s play TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER in May and came back saying she was brilliant. Could there be any doubt of that? Noreen said that Tamara was so good and was really happy to greet her fans afterward and even allowed Noreen to share these images with TAMARA OBSCURA and her fans. So thanks so much Noreen for sharing these. I’ve marked them as belonging to Noreen. So I hope you enjoy them. Thanks to Noreen for sharing and to Tamara for allowing them to be taken. I can’t imagine after completing a show how tired she must have been. As always Tamara is a treasure. I believe the date was May 18 because Noreen said she was back home by the 24th. If I’m wrong Noreen please correct in comment. Thanks so much Noreen.
- [ 002 ] FAN ENCOUNTER IMAGES: 06/18/2012 – NOREEN SMITH @ TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER
I have an excellent review for you of Tamara’s play TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER. I love this review because it exemplifies the reason I think Tamara is coming into her own as an actress of some gravitas. I won’t gibber too much and just let you read it. A preview below with a link to the press section. And what I love most about this review? It didn’t have to mention Tamara’s Emmy or her soap roles. It just lauded her on her merit as an actress.
Notable as larger-than-life Williams, theater veteran Jack Heller reveals the acute vulnerability beneath the playwright’s selfishness, roar and bluster. Tamara Braun, best known for her daytime television roles, matches Heller every step of the way as Williams’ female counterpart. The pair’s tour-de-force performances are intensified further by the intimacy of the small, black-box theater.
Note to casting agents: Read this review several times over and consider casting an actress know knows her stuff instead of a fluff piece.
I’ve been a little remiss at posting here due to the recent issues I had with the images I posted from Tamara’s play. The thing that has been running through my mind is, “How to proceed in terms of bringing Tamara’s fans what they’ve come to expect here?” And with good reason. So I’ve been juggling the pros and the cons in figuring out how to balance the needs of this site as well as those of the original authors/photographers and such of the various things that make up a fan website. So what I’ve decided to do is change the policy here at TAMARA OBSCURA. From here on I will post the content in the gallery or media sites and include in the post or page the original source, therefore any complications can be addressed by the fact I have posted the original source as well as comply with the nature of what is termed “Fair Use” for the purpose of furthering the understanding and education of people on the career of Tamara Braun. So without further adieu. I have an interview with Tamara on a wide range of things. First is her play, TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER where she explains her character Woman. She then goes into the survival of the Soap Opera genre as well as her role in the groundbreaking storyline involving the first Same-Sex marriage on daytime. Tamara also gives us a bit of insight into why she became an actress. I have added the article to the press section as well as cited the original source. Below is a snippet of Tamara’s interview.
Phyllis: Do you prefer acting for television, film or for the stage? Do you prepare for one differently than the other?
Tamara: I like the subtleties that film and TV allow that theatre does not. The camera does not lie. It picks up thought and inner life. But with film you have to wait so long to see the final product. TV airs much quicker than film and daytime…such quick turnaround but often I was too busy to watch.In theatre, the audience becomes another entity to your performance. You try and not let them change your performance but inevitably one is affected by it. We are affected by people’s energy in life so of course we will be affected in the theatre. If the audience is with you on a certain night it can propel your performance to great heights and if they are not really with you (and the cast takes it in) then unfortunately the performance can feel off…in terms of preferring one more than others… I like them all for the challenges that each bring.
- [ 001 ] PRESS: 04/26/2012 – TAMARA BRAUN TALKS TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, DAYS OF OUR LIVES AND AMC
Tamara’s play TENNESSEE IN THE SUMMER has its first review. The LA Times has given it a glowing review. See below with source credited. More below the cut:
Review: Tamara Braun in intimate ‘Tennessee in the Summer’
By Margaret Gray
April 18, 2012, 2:10 p.m.If you’ve been struggling to dissuade your child from becoming a playwright, here’s an easy fix: Take the theatrically inclined scribbler to the Sidewalk Studio Theatre to see “Tennessee in the Summer,” Joe Besecker’s nightmarish portrait of the late-career Tennessee Williams, sweating, reminiscing, drinking and gulping Seconal pills in a New York City hotel room.
Besecker’s conceit is that Williams (the great Jack Heller) had an inner child — actually a young blond woman in a slip, played here by the slinky, sloe-eyed soap opera star Tamara Braun. As the lights come up, Williams hunches over his typewriter, surrounded by balled-up pages, while the blond sprawls on the bed, complaining of boredom and taunting Williams about his “recent string of box-office flops.” Eventually she lures a hustler (Robert Standley) into the room, effectively ending the workday.
“Woman,” as she is listed in the program, owes a great deal to Williams’ female characters, particularly Maggie in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” But she’s also a persuasive embodiment of that inner voice that can make the most successful existence an inescapable hell. At times her mockery becomes so vicious that I was tempted to grab a Seconal for myself. (The 33-seat space is very intimate. I essentially participated in the steamy sex scenes, staged fearlessly by director Sal Romeo.) But she can also be sympathetic, even loving, and in the most wrenching scene, when Williams’ brother Dakin (Standley again) tricks him into committing himself, she suffers alongside him.
Woman forces Williams to relive painful incidents from his past: encounters with his adored schizophrenic sister, Rose (Louise Davis), and pivotal moments in his 14-year romance with the muscular Frankie Merlo (Standley yet again). Davis is chilling as the mad, impish Rose, and also performs an unforgettable monologue as Williams’s equally crazy and far meaner mother, Edwina. The character of Frankie is the least well written, almost mawkish, and the point of his scenes seems to be to present Williams’ selfish, cruel side.
So vividly does this play depict a great writer’s misbehavior, isolation, terror and misery that even the most stage-struck youth in the audience is bound to fill out that law school application you brought along just in case.
Off to a good start. I’ve been combing the internet for any other reviews for the play. I’m so happy Tamara is getting good notices. As I’ve said before I’d kill to see this. There are three actors I’d love to see on stage, one of them is Tamara. The other two are David Strathairn who garnered himself an Oscar Nomination for his role as Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Good Night And Good Luck and who is returning for season two of the SyFy channel’s breatkout series Alphas and the other is Keir Dullea who I’ve created a site for and who starred as astronaut Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick’s amazing work of art 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Keir founded a theatre group with his late wife, Susie, for helping talent both young and old to hone their crafts with script-in-hand readings of various plays. I’d love to see either of these three in something before I keel over. That would be the dream at least.
