A talk with Tennessee By Tom Boyd
Adapted from a talk by Sanjana Idnani and India Barton delivered at Senior Lit Soc Image by Evelina Obretetskaya
T
ennessee Williams is known for his pioneering of New Plastic Theatre, a blend between naturalistic dialogue and expressionistic techniques in order to add a layer of truth to his characters and their experiences. Through his plays, Williams presents a creative portrayal of his characters’ struggles, which undoubtedly moves the audience through the heightened sense of realism and though some of his techniques are not in use today as he originally intended, the productions still clearly convey the issues he wished to portray at the time. Audiences have often been powerfully moved by Williams’ characters but having seen them, one cannot help noticing a number similarities in themes and problems that the characters face, especially in Williams’ three most well-known plays: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, ‘The Glass Menagerie’, and ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof ’. All three of the plays have influences of the Southern Aristocratic culture, though this is presented differently in each play. 28
Blanche, in ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, has recently emerged from the dead social world of the South and tries to impose the courtly and traditional cultural values in New Orleans where they seem out of place. Similarly, Amanda Wingfield
raises her children based on Southern values and especially talks about “cultivating charm.” However, by this point, her world of the South is long gone, intensifying our pity for her. On the other hand, the aristocracy in ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof ’ is on the cusp of dying as symbolised by the death of the patriarch Big Daddy. Through this, therefore, Williams is able to highlight much more explicitly the corruption of this social world. Homosexuality is a prominent theme in all three plays as well, this theme being very much reflective of Williams’ own struggles as a homosexual when it was not accepted in society, particularly in the post bellum return to conservative ideals. In ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’, Blanche’s disgust at Allan’s homosexuality leads him to suicide, something that haunts Blanche herself throughout the play. Indeed, Williams reflects the importance of this memory to Blanche’s resulting tragedy by placing this aspect of her past in scene six, the structural heart of this eleven scene play. A similar
