Hey guys!
Here are some main points about the reviews/production history:
- First opened on December 3rd, 1947 at the Barrymore Theatre (had succesful tryouts in Boston, New Haven and Philadelphia)
- Thomas P. Adler: “may arguably be the finest play ever written for the American stage”
- Howard Barnes: Williams is the “O’Neill of the present”
- 855 performances in the first two years
- 1st play to ever receive the Pulitzer, Donaldson and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards
- Received both as feminist and celebratory of masculinity; Marxist-inspired interpretations claim a message of political revolt
- Character of Blanche has been widely debated over; hailed as Williams’ “finest creation,” and a “sexual Joan of Arc,” but noted for her contradictions and refusal to accept reality
- Williams documented as identifying closely with both Blanche and Stanley, “I was and still am Blanche, but I have a Stanley side in me, too.”
Some preliminary biographical info:
Born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911
Died 1983, apparently alcohol-related, in New York, at 71
Father C.C. Williams was a traveling salesman, mother Edwina had a history of nervous breakdowns
Older sister Rose (very close), younger brother Dakin
Moved to St. Louis in 1918, afterwards moved around a lot
Picked on at school, shy, always loved writing
University of Missouri to study journalism, started writing plays – influenced by Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Thomas Wolfe
Dad made him drop out and work at a shoe factory for 3 years, had a nervous breakdown, went to Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Iowa
Rose had a prefrontal lobotomy, institutionalized for the rest of her life
Grant to study playwriting at the New School in New York – started to be influenced by Anton Chekov and poet Hart Crane
1944 – The Glass Menagerie opened in New York, won New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award
1947 – A Streetcar Named Desire
1955 – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Critics’ Circle and Pulitzer)
Common themes: alcoholism, depression, desire, loneliness, insanity, nostalgia
The South
Being openly homosexual
Realism in the wake of the Depression and World War II
Wrote 25 full length plays, 5 made into movies, 5 screenplays, over 70 one-acts, hundreds of short stories, 2 novels and a memoir
http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/23445/sample/9780521623445wsc00.pdf, Sparknotes, Wikipedia
Good work so far!
I think it is interesting to view Streetcar from different dramaturgical approaches such as the queer approach. One very interesting production of the play was the one Split Britches theatre company did between two lesbian women. (They actually were Artists in Residence last year) It brings up some interesting questions on Streetcar. I also think it is interesting to read Streetcar knowing the Tennessee Williams himself was homosexual (closeted for many years) and see the parallels between him and the characters in his play.
-P