In Craig Lucas’ play, Blue Window, the main character, Libby, struggles to act the part as dutiful and entertaining party host after a mishap early on that causes her to question her reasoning behind and ability to plan such an event. Stuck between wanting to return to normalcy after tragedy and playing the façade of someone who is mentally “okay”, Libby and her misfit group of party guests portray the complexities of relationships in trying to make both emotional and conversational connections. By analyzing the staging, music and acting throughout Blue Window, it is clear to see how the director, Terry Silver-Alford, utilizes Lucas’ play to represent the bustling mundanity of everyday adulthood that ultimately plagues every person as each character endeavors to find solutions to their similarly depressive nuances of life and strive beyond their illusion of happiness. In doing so, each realizes that the closure they seek is not seen through their own “Blue Window,” but what they end up missing while on the inside.
The first scene opens with an array of different furniture spread across the stage with the New York skyline lining the backdrop. What initially seems as a group of characters interacting together in one room, soon becomes a chaotic mix of dialogue. Silver-Alford uses this chaos in order to introduce each character in the play by doing short freeze-frames as the audience peers into their mind or “blue window”. In doing so, the director allows the audience to
The audience is able to instantly understand what is happening in a scene and how it impacts on what has happened and what is occurring in present time. The play uses its style perfectly with its use of extended dialogue to convey meaning and tell the story. The audience can get lost in its story as there are no confusing abstract themes to throw them, everything the story is about is laid out before them and this helps with understanding the dramatic meaning as the dramatic meaning is very serious and realistic, just like the storytelling style.
The play is episodic. Tension builds throughout each scene so that the audience can see the deeper mystery and bigger
Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.
In this piece Berkoff decided to use frames as the sole piece of set; one for each member of the ensemble. We also used frames, again one for each member of the ensemble, alongside other pieces of set. These came into their own in the second half of the play. For example, in the final scene we created a courtroom using just frames, and built this on stage during Sierra’s speech. We felt that this was a compelling use of set, as Sierra’s moment of calm thoughtfulness is cut short by her rapist building a witness box around her. The crudeness of this image is an homage to the heightened politicised tableaux of Brecht; it is an example of gestus, and how the simple moving of a frame represents victims who are never able to escape the influence of their
Ruth’s character reminds us that the process of producing the play within the play is about finding a deeper, more real reality. For characters such as Ruth and Roy, the play is about creating an escape from their reality within the institution, such as characters like Zac whom “can’t stand real things”. For other characters such as Julie, the mental institution surrounds them, but performing the play allows them to break free from reality. Through producing the play, Lewis explores what is ‘real’ and what is ‘normal’, Nowra introduces the concept that the two concepts contrast with each other. Nowra concluded the play with Lewis’ narration. Turning off the lights sets the realisation of the brief tails of their lives given by Lewis, which are powered by reality and not a pristine ending, as life continues to happen.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller are two of the twentieth century’s best-known plays. The differences and similarities between both of the plays are hidden in their historical and social contexts. The characters of The Glass Menagerie and the Death of a Salesman are trapped by the constraints of their everyday lives, unable to communicate with their loved ones and being fearful for their future. There are a lot of comparisons that exist, especially between the settings, symbolism and characterization drawn between the two plays. The contrast comes form the ways that the characters choose to deal or not with the harsh circumstances of life.
Williams’s play is a tragedy, and one of quietude. He once expressed that “Glass Menagerie is my first quiet play, and perhaps my last.” It is a play of profound sadness, and through relationships between characters, portrays the “cries of the heart.” There is no cry more powerful that the cry and inner desperation of the heart. Williams’s has very little social context, but rather focuses on the conflicts within a domestic family. Such a focus is powerful, and the playwright expresses this power and importance implicitly through the estranged relationship between Amanda and Tom Wingfield.
In Tennessee Williams’s play The Glass Menagerie, a common overarching theme is Escapism. Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield all attempt to escape the dull and depressing reality of their situation. They engage in escapism by fleeting into their own idealistic worlds which push them farther apart. Similarly, we can detect the same theme in Gaines book, Lesson Before Dying. In this book various people use escapism to leave their reality and enter this alternate headspace that allows them to feel free of all of their worries. However, it is soon realized that this facad will never last. In this book, Gaines shows how escapism can truly take over someone's
The first scene introduces the characters and gives a taste of their personality to the audience. Also the play has an element of Whodunnit since Eva’s Smiths story is slowly exposed due to the Inspector’s questioning.
In act one they start the act on an open stage no props and curtain less. The stage manager enters the story and introduces the play. He tells us the setting the town of Grover’s Corners, “New Hampshire, just before dawn on May 7, 1901”. He describes landmarks, churches, schools, and other important places. This tells us that their home town is small but a big part of their lives.
This creates four places of action or further into the story four places of conflict. It all stays true to the original time period and helps transport the audience back to 1950s Australia. The main feature of this set was the beautiful white but not completely opaque curtain which surrounded the stage. When coupled with Nigel Leving’s lighting design created wallpaper like effect to surround the space which is later destroyed to connect with the climax of the play. Although it drew you into the space in the beginning once characters started to enter and exit you notice that the curtain alludes to a greater world beyond the living room. To signify the end of Act II and the beginning of Act III the architraves of the room were lifted from 3 to 6 metres to create an empty area to help show that after the fight between Barney and Roo all the characters felt isolated and created a stark reality of a house with no life. The costuming also done by Runciman was a gentle connection to the original time period but also had a seamlessly had a connection to each character and their personalities. Olive was very much a free spirit and was very open with herself although naïve her very young playful style dress and her lack of shoes connected with this so that we really understood her as a
In the play “Subteranian homesick blues again”, Dennis Reardon gives the reader different emotions throughout the script. The audience experiences laughter, aghast, and wonder. The six actors in this play think that they are on a tour, however, they soon come to find out that they were very wrong.
Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, shows the importance of staging, gestures, and props to create the proper atmosphere of a play. Without the development of the proper atmosphere through directions from the author, the whole point of the play may be missed. Words definitely do not tell the whole story in Trifles - the dialog only complements the unspoken.
Near the climatic moment in Susan Glaspell’s one act, Trifles, a farmwife sucessfully justifies to her friend why they should hid the evidence of a murder another woman committed. Instead of using logical reasoning, Mrs. Hale reasons with her by using empathy, saying, “I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be-for women. I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same thing-it’s all just a different kind of same thing.” (Glaspell, 943). Originally performed in 1916 by the Provincetown Players, an American theatre company Glaspell helped established, Trifles strove to create consciousness about the oppression women faced daily. This play was revolutionary for time,
In the opening of the play, flute music plays, symbolizing the overwhelming pressures Willy places on himself, furthering the content as well as the artisanship of the play. The curtains open to a scene of Willy’s house in Brooklyn. Miller writes the following,