What Is The Importance Of Stage Directions In The Glass Menagerie

Stage directions are used during the play to reveal even more of the personality of each of the characters. The extremely-confident personality of Nick is made clear in the first scene, when Nick, Lucy and Lewis first enter the darkened theatre, and Nick starts to toy with Lucy in the dark, pretending to be a ghost. Stage directions can also be used to reveal the feelings of characters. When Lucy and Nick leave, and Lewis is left with Roy, you can tell just by watching the way Lewis holds his body, and moves about the stage, he feels betrayed by Lucy, and by Nick.

Not only did it help to aid in giving the viewer an idea of the setting of the play, but also aided in the over feel and mood of the production.

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.

Wilder created the Stage Manager for various of reasons. The stage Manager is unique in that his presence fills every scene, whether he is the one speaking to the audience or playing a character in the play. The Stage Manager provides background information and familiarizes the audience with Grover’s Corners and the characters. The Stage Manager is aware that the audience are present and breaks down the “fourth wall” to speak to the audience directly, ignoring the confines of the stage. “The Stage Manager wants the audience to really be there with the characters and wants us to listen and look at him” (Millman).

The play makes you think, whether for a split moment or a long time, about the idea of being aware while going about even the most menial of tasks.

The scenes and props complimented the attire of the performers, blending together create a magnificent display. The scenery was realistic enough to afford the viewer an escape into depths of the show. The setting was beautiful and the structures almost lifelike, excepting the absence of a front screen door. It seems that almost all plays and television shows I have viewed neglect this detail. The stage lighting played a key role in the show by setting the mood of the performance during soulful, pensive songs. In contrast, the lighting proved to be a detriment by overbearing the performance of the artists, in that one’s attention was drawn to the glare of extreme quantities of makeup rather than the actions of the characters. This was most notable during the final portions of the production.

The first chapter, “The Art of Staging” claims “Staging in fiction involves putting characters in specific strategic positions in the scene so that some unvoiced nuance is revealed.” (Baxter 13) This includes the character’s standing positions, their proximity to each other, specific gestures and facial expressions, which give the reader more insight to the scene and the characters without explicitly saying so. This goes hand in hand with the setting of the atmosphere where atmosphere sets the dominant tone or the mood of a story. The atmosphere can be in reference to the setting or the characters themselves. Here, the reader is to read between the lines. The key to this is using a lot of detail which is crucial to providing the information.

Occurring frequently throughout the play, but particularly predominant at the end of Act I is the use of stage directions to

   Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world.  The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present.

Williams has made good use of simple visual aids, such as colour, to help the audience retain certain things of importance within the play.

shall firstly do a summery of the play and give a basic image of what

Without light, the theatre cannot exist, that much is certain. As actors, as audience members, as technical visionaries, we are only as powerful as the light we are given. The extent to which we depend upon light in performance has changed dramatically throughout history, however, as light technology developed and expanded. In the history of performance, the artistic community is constantly victim to the limits of lighting technology, and exponentially altered by breakthroughs. From the utilization of candles and natural light to isolated light and electricity, the histories of illumination and theatre are virtually inseparable, and continue to push the boundaries of live performance.

The setting of the play helped to develop the mood. First of all, the abundance of props brought the story to live successfully. For example, the bed and door created the forgotten, quiet feeling in the old man's room. Next, the floorboards were lifted up so it actually looked like the

Written in 1944, Tennessee Williams wrote a play during World War II when people were barely making ends meet. Centering on the Wingfield family, the story consisted of five characters: Amanda Wingfield (the mother), Laura Wingfield (the daughter), Tom Wingfield (son, narrator, Laura’s older brother), Jim Connor (Tom and Laura’s old acquaintance from high school) and Mr. Wingfield (father to Tom and Laura, and Amanda’s husband)- who abandoned the family long before the start of the play. The title, “The Glass Menagerie”, represented a collection of glass animals on display in the Wingfields’ home. At one point or another, these animals then represented each character when they couldn’t accept reality. The theme of this play were about the

Stage directions are used as way of allowing playwrights to give direction as to what is supposed to be happening on the stage, and is used to enhance the audience’s experience and involvement in the play. Stage direction is used to great effect by both Arthur Miller and Brian Friel in their plays. In A View From the Bridge, Arthur Miller’s stage directions are very intricate, and detailed to the point of sounding strange at times, “After a moment of watching her face Eddie breaks into a smile, but it almost seems that tears will form in his eyes”. Brian Friel’s stage directions are very similar, as they too involve a considerable