Director’s Notes – The Glass Menagerie -Bryce Alexander PART 1: THE PLAYWRIGHT & HIS PLAY “It’s no tragedy. Glass breaks so easily no matter how careful you are.”
When Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, he was aiming at finding a “penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.” Perhaps it was his personal connection to the material, perhaps it is the poetic language and various stage devices he implores throughout the script, but Williams’ classic remains one of the most iconic examples of Williams’ dramatic style. It is no secret that The Glass Menagerie’s characters deeply reflect Williams’ personal history. Williams’ father was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker. Williams’ mother was a Mississippi clergyman’s daughter and was prone to frantic anxiety attacks. Until Williams was seven, his family lived in Mississippi. After that, they moved to St. Louis where the family’s situation worsened. His father’s drinking increased, and the young Williams was ostracized and taunted at school. During this time, he and his sister Rose became extremely close. An average student and a social outcast in high school, Williams turned to the movies and writing for solace. He graduated and entered the University of Missouri as a journalism major, but before he could receive his degree, his father forced him to withdraw and work at the International Shoe Company – for $65 a week. Although he was no longer in college, Williams was still very interested in writing. He wrote not “with any hope of making a living at it, but because [he] found no other means of expressing things that seemed to demand expression.” Williams worked at the shoe factory for three years, culminating in a nervous breakdown. He returned to college, this time at Washington University in St. Louis, but personal problems led him to drop out of and enroll in the University of Iowa. While there, and without his knowledge, his sister Rose underwent a frontal lobotomy which left her institutionalized for the rest of her life. In the years that followed, Williams worked menial jobs and wandered from city to city. The Glass Menagerie was written soon after. Chicago, 1944: The Glass Menagerie opened. Perhaps it was his poetic, profound, and imaginative depiction of his own life, but The Glass Menagerie earned the New York Drama Critics Circle Award only a year later when it moved to Broadway. Williams would go on to be one of the most celebrated American playwrights of all time, and The Glass Menagerie would remain one of his most respected works. While Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof have also garnered nearly unrivaled popularity, The Glass Menagerie demonstrates the birth of Williams’ dramatic style. In the “Authors Production Notes” of The Glass Menagerie, Williams addresses the play’s many elements; from the music, to the screen devices (projections), to the lighting. By commenting on all of these elements, Williams was attempting to conceptualize a new style of theatre – something he called the “plastic theatre.” In his opening notes, Williams imagines a theatre where “reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest.” He calls for the end of “photographic likeness” in plays, shunning
realistic details like “genuine Frigidaire and authentic ice cubes” saying that the production should find deeper truth in those items “than those which [are] merely present in appearance.” Williams was inspired to choose elements that had meaning, deeper symbolism, and the potential for great intrinsic value over realistic details. Even the opening monologue of the play comments on the productions “dim” lighting and “sentimental” music. The play, he says, is “not realistic.” Coffee cups and tangible dinners are omitted, indicated only by the actors’ movements, while candles and – of course – the glass elements of the menagerie exist in literal, tangible structures that have deeper meaning. The Glass Menagerie is not just Laura’s obsession, it is a representation of her being. Likewise, Williams’ screen devices are not for scenic value or to indicate time or place, but to “strengthen the allusions in the writing.” Williams’ use of symbol was so inventive that The Glass Menagerie’s text is often studied in high-school English classes around the world. Williams would likely chuckle at this fact, as realistic theatre, he notes, corresponds best to the “academic environment.” It’s certainly worth noting that despite Williams’ desire to implement every element of the “plastic theatre,” Williams’ concept of projections was unattainable enough in 1945 that they were omitted from the production. No Broadway production has ever added them back in – including the current production at the Booth Theatre. Williams did, however, retain the devices in the manuscripts of his work, and we are able to utilize these copies to more fully realize Williams’ vision in our production today. As important as these elements are in re-creating his masterpiece, Williams’ extraordinary usage of language cannot be overlooked in creating his plastic theatre. In fact, the famous playwright David Mamet has described Williams’ plays as the “greatest dramatic poetry in the American language.” Through usage of alliteration (repetition of sound, ex. “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers”), onomatopoeia (words that mimic natural sounds, ex. “woosh” or “quack”), assonance (repetition of vowel sounds for internal rhyme, ex. “Purple curtain”), and Rhythm (often iambic pentameter, ex. “In sooth I know not why I am so sad.” Merchant of Venice) Williams permeates his dialogue with “lyrical qualities so subtle that the reader or hearer, unaware, responds not to realistic speech but, instead, to speech heightened by such poetic effects.” When his heartfelt, personal story is combined with the implementation and conceptualization of all of his unique stylistic choices, it is no wonder that Tennessee Williams became so celebrated – and no wonder that The Glass Menagerie remains such an interesting and admired piece of theatre. PART 2: THE DIRECTOR AND THIS PLAY “[The Stage Magician] gives you illusion in the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” The Glass Menagerie is regarded as one of the greatest American plays of all time -not simply because it is a moving tragedy about times gone by, but because of its groundbreaking theatrical concept, extraordinary use of language, and breathtaking story. These incredible components come together with astounding resonance when presented with the truth in humanity that accompanies every Phamaly production. Never has Williams’ opening monologue been more true: Phamaly gives you “truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”
The actress you see on-stage before you playing Laura is not pretending to have a disability; is not walking like she assumes a disabled person would walk. Instead, she is presenting to you - in unmatched truth - her actual walk, her genuine body. Her character is only an illusion. The actress you see on-stage before you playing Amanda is a mother. She cares for her son as all mothers do, and loves him unconditionally – wanting only the best for him. Living with her disability, she can remember the day when she didn’t wake up in pain; when the stigma of being overweight didn’t come shooting into her from the eyes of strangers. They don’t know it’s part of her condition. These are her truths. Her character is only an illusion. The actor you see on-stage before you playing Jim can recall younger days when he was a highschool authority; the days before his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder convinced him to drop out of school a month before his graduation. While it’s true his “pace has slowed,” he certainly isn’t discouraged. His character is only an illusion. Finally, the actor you see on-stage before you playing Tom has always wondered why his hearing impairment has had to prevent him from a full time performance career in theatres small and large. He dreams of being able to burst out of the limitations placed upon him by the world around him. He too, has wrestled with conflict between the true needs and desires of his family and himself. His character is only an illusion. In our production, Tom is the ringleader - the head magician - in the stage show called The Glass Menagerie. You will see him orchestrating the action – recalling and re-living the events that stem from his memory. But perhaps most amazingly, even while he manipulates and changes the characters and events he sees before him, the truth in the actors still remains. The play is our illusion. The truth is our performers. The Glass Menagerie is not the story of any hero or villain, but of individuals who must walk their own paths – right or wrong - not by choice but by necessity, by circumstance, and even by the impenetrable influences within us all. The characters in the play must walk their own paths, but when coupled with Phamaly’s performers – who navigate the path of disability everyday - the play takes on an even greater and pervasive significance. As Williams notes, he “has a weakness for symbols.” True to his word, the play is full of them. But a symbol is nothing more than “truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” For example, the glass unicorn is a symbol for Laura. Glass, like Laura, is fragile. That’s the illusion. Laura is not fragile, however, because of her disability. That is the truth. When the unicorn loses his horn, Laura does not lose her disability. Instead, they both appear to lose the element of fear that has been holding them back from engaging with the world. After the unicorn breaks, Laura - ever so simply - reminds us that it was “no tragedy. Glass breaks so easily no matter how careful you are.” She then gives the unicorn to Jim as a souvenir so that he may remember the time when he changed her path forever. Williams was looking for truth on-stage when he asked for “Plastic Theatre.” Through his own autobiographical experience represented in The Glass Menagerie, Williams felt that it was his responsibility to “refine it and elevate it, and make of it an essence that a wide audience can somehow manage to feel in themselves: ‘This is true.’” We have that same goal.
Using Williams’ guidance, we have produced an original score to accompany the performance that provides an atmosphere of nostalgia and emotion, the “fiddle in the wings” as Tom puts it; but it also evicts a feeling of the circus, with Tom as our ringmaster. We have provided a setting that traps our characters in the abyss of society. With hints of southern charm, the past and present are washed out by the monotone blues of a darker time in Tom’s life. The projections and lights exist as Williams had originally intended – focusing our minds to the themes, concepts, and emotions present in the language, the story, and Tom’s subconscious. The costumes and properties faithfully represent the period, emotion, and delicacy of 1930’s St. Louis. All of these elements come together to form the illusion of our production; but they all work in unison to focus our minds on the play’s truths. At the end of the play, when Tom is reflecting on his path - on leaving his family behind – we are all left wondering: ‘is Tom a bad person, or did he have to leave to find himself? Is Laura going to find a suitor, or will she fall deeper into isolation? Will Amanda strengthen her desire for her happier past, or will she be motivated to create a new future?’ All we can do is use our own experiences to rationalize the ending. The genius behind Williams’ classic, in my opinion, lies in the ability to connect our own lives to the ones being presented on-stage. Just as the characters reflect on their paths, and our performers reflect on theirs, the story begs us to reflect, to ask ourselves ‘what is the significance, the beauty, the complexity, and the merit of our own paths in life? How are we like them?’ Whether living with disabilities, financial hardships, or broken hearts - we have all had to walk the path of being human, of being “true” to ourselves. Maybe we can all use a little reflection, a little comparison, a little empathy; and in the end, being human –and having the opportunity to walk our paths - may not be such a bad thing. We hope you find this production of The Glass Menagerie to be full of personal truth; to be enlightening, rousing, and most of all - a reminder that life is “no tragedy. Glass breaks so easily no matter how careful you are.” All we can do is take a souvenir and continue down our paths.