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This production has been made possible through the combined efforts of ENG 171 & 271 (Technical &
Advanced Technical Theatre), ENG 173 (Intro to Stage Lighting and Sound, and ENG 291
(Plays in Production)
the ur international theatre program
artistic director nigel maister
production manager gordon rice
administrator katie farrell
assistant technical director sarah eisel
props master alexandra rozansky
production assistant macie mcgowan
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box office & front-of-house manager angela giuseppetti
assistant costume shop manager grace interlichia
senior costume shop intern lakiesha holyfield
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program information compiled by meridel phillips
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production trailer by ulrik soderstrom
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Dylan Bochicchio - Ronald Borgolini - Vasyl Boychuk - Elizabeth Bradley - Benjamin Clifford - Julia Cowan
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special thanks
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senior farewell
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the university of rochester international theatre program presents
the glass menagerie
by tennessee williams
directed by laura savia
set design by daniel zimmerman
costume design by jessica pabst
lighting design by jeanette oi-suk yew
sound design by veronika vorel
voice & acting coaching by ruth childs
production staff
production stage manager ........................................................................ liza penney
assistant production stage manager ..................................................... sara frederick
assistant stage managers ............................................................... deema ali/costumes
............................................................................................... juan de la guardia/sound
...................................................................................................... richard lau/run crew
................................................................................................... enobong okung/lights
........................................................................................... michael tamburrino/props
master electrician ........................................................................... christiopher futia
assistant master electricians ........................... cassandra donatelli & garrick centola
audiovisual engineer ................................................................................. theo lincoln
assistant audiovisual engineer ................................................................... ryan kelly
scenic artists ............................................... macie mcgowan & apollo mark weaver
assistant scenic artists ......................... marika azoff, lydia jimenez & travis kohler
hair & makeup ............................................................... grace elizabeth interlichia
stitcher .............................................................................................. melanie weekes
choreography consultant .................................................................. missy pfohl smith
dramaturg ............................................................................................ kelsey burritt
assistant director .................................................................................. meridel phillips
this production was made possible, in part, by the
ellen miller '55 endowment for theater productions
the glass menagerie runs approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes without intermission
orn as Thomas Lanier Williams III on March
26, 1911, the young Tennessee Williams was the
middle child (and oldest son) in a family of three,
raised by a traveling shoe salesman and an overbearing mother from a traditional, genteel Southern
family. He spent much of his early childhood in his
grandfather’s parish in Clarksdale, Mississippi, during which time he suffered from a case of diphtheria, a severe respiratory tract illness that nearly killed
him. Forced to spend nearly a year recuperating, he
was doted upon by his mother, resulting in an inextricable bond between the two. Several other factors
from his life in Mississippi would become extremely
influential in his later work. His grandfather, Walter
Dakin, would read to him from his extensive library,
including works by Shakespeare, Milton, and Poe,
instilling an admiration for writing in the young
Williams. The First World War, and the stories of
warfare and trauma from those who came back from
it, would also deeply affect him.
The parallels between Tennessee’s early life
and that of Tom’s in The Glass Menagerie have been
extensively documented. His father, Cornelius, was
not only away much of the time, but also a heavy
drinker and an abusive husband. His mother, Edwina, was a charming and talkative social climber,
obsessed with her own past as a popular debutante.
His older sister, Rose, was his closest companion as a
child, such that the connection between them sometimes led others to believe they were twins. Later
in life, after increasingly erratic behavior, Rose was
institutionalized for schizophrenia and subjected to
a full-frontal lobotomy.
At seven years old, his parents moved the
family to St. Louis, Missouri, where his father had
secured a job at the International Shoe Company.
Williams grew to despise the city, where his family was very much part of the poorer economic
bracket, something he was made repeatedly aware
of at school. During his years as a high school
student and an undergraduate at the University of
Missouri, tortured by his parents’ antagonistic relationship and his sister’s emotional and physical
distance from him (Rose had been sent to finishing
school), Williams began writing and submitting his
stories for publication. The work won several local
awards and honorable mentions. At twenty-one, his
B
tennessee williams
1911-1983
with Pocket Opera NY, Brecht's In The Jungle of Cities
with Gisela Cárdenas and Teatro de la Universidad
Católica del Perú, Aya Ogawa's Oph3lia and Journey
to the Ocean (also a collaboration with Adhikaar and
produced by The Foundry), Erik Ehn's commemorative performance cycle, Soulographie: Our Genocides,
Sheila Callaghan's Roadkill Confidential (premiere
production directed by Kip Fagan) and Kara Lee Corthron's AliceGraceAnon. Upcoming: L'incoronazione di
Poppea at Manhattan School of Music, the 10th International Toy Theater Festival and her original puppetry production, Are They Edible?, will premiere at
LaMaMa ETC in November 2013. Recipient of the
NEA/TCG Career Development Grant Program
and teaches at Stony Brook University.
www.jeanetteyew.com.
Veronika Vorel (Sound Design) is a recently relocated
sound designer and composer in Los Angeles. Prior
to her move, she was based in Washington, DC, where
her credits included: Shakespeare Theatre Company:
The Government Inspector, The Way of the World; Ford’s
Theatre: Black Pearl Sings!; Woolly Mammoth Theatre
Company: Civilization, Fever/Dream, Eclipsed, Full
Circle; Folger Theatre: Gaming Table, Cyrano, Arcadia,
1 Henry IV; Signature Theatre: I Am My Own Wife;
Theater J: Photograph 51, The Odd Couple, Something
You Did, Mikveh; Round House Theatre: Alice. Regional credits include: Yale Repertory Theatre: Boleros
for the Disenchanted; Kansas City Starlight Theatre:
Anything Goes, The Producers. Associate sound design credits: Manhattan Theatre Club: Master Class;
The Kennedy Center; CENTERSTAGE; Arena
Stage; The Geffen Playhouse. She has been involved
in the organization and curatorship for the Sound
Design portion of the Prague Quadrennial Design
Conference in 2003, 2007, and 2011. Awards: three
Helen Hayes Award nominations. Training: California Institute of the Arts, Yale School of Drama.
Ruth Childs (Voice & Acting Coach) has been
teaching at The College at Brockport since 2001.
She teaches acting, voice, improv, politics of theatre
and movement classes and is a certified Fitzmaurice
Voice teacher. Ruth has directed multiple productions at The College at Brockport. Her acting credits
include numerous performances at GEVA Theatre in
Rochester and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis
(Professional Regional Theatres) as well as multiple
productions in Professional Equity Waver theatres
locally and regionally. She continues to do voiceover
and industrial film work. Ruth also works as a voice
and dialect coach. Ruth served as the regional chair
of the National Playwriting Program for the Kennedy
Center American College Theatre Festival, and continues to be a respondent and reader for the national
and regional playwriting awards. In January of 2011
she was awarded the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Gold Medallion.
I went much farther. For time is the longest distance
between two places...
Tom Wingfield, Act ii Scene 8
artist bios
Laura Savia’s (Director) directing credits include The
Mnemonist of Dutchess County (upcoming, The Attic),
House Strictly Private (1st Irish Festival), The Color
of Justice (TheatreworksUSA), The Urban Dictionary
Plays, The Wii Plays, and I Am Frightened of My Body
(Ars Nova), Pinter's The Lover (Drama League), The
Last Days of Judas Iscariot (NYU/Strasberg), Ski Dubai
(At Play), and the 24 Hour Plays, as well as readings
and workshops for The Public Theater, Roundabout
Theatre Company, Atlantic Theater Company, 2econd
Stage, Naked Angels, and Ma-Yi Theater Company,
among others. Assistant directing includes productions with Michael Mayer, Diane Paulus, Neil Pepe
and Daniel Sullivan, most recently the Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino.
Laura is the Director of the Workshop at Williamstown Theatre Festival. She spent five seasons on
Atlantic Theater Company's staff, including two as
Literary Associate. Co-conceiver and director of The
Living Newspaper, which has performed at Joe’s Pub,
Le Poisson Rouge, and the A.R.T.’s Club Oberon.
2009 Drama League Directing Fellow. Alumna of
Northwestern University.
Daniel Zimmerman (Set Design) is a scenic designer.
Selected NY credits: Andrew Hinderaker's Suicide,
Inc., dir. Jonathan Berry, for Roundabout Theater
Company; Henry IV Part 1, dir. Davis McCallum;
Bekah Brunsetter’s Be a Good Little Widow, dir. Stephen Brackett, for Ars Nova; The Confidence Man for
Woodshed Collective; Peggy Stafford's Motel Cherry,
dir. Meghan Finn, for Clubbed Thumb; and Steven
Levenson’s Seven Minutes in Heaven, dir. Adrienne
Campbell-Holt, for Colt Coeur. Other New York
work has been seen at HERE Arts, Cherry Lane Theatre, and The Ohio. Regional Theatre: Romeo and Juliet for Actors Theatre of Louisville; Sam Mark's The
Delling Shore and Jeff Augustin's Cry Old Kingdom
for the Humana Festival; God of Carnage for Portland
Stage; BOOM for Kitchen Theater; and The Who’s
Tommy for ReVision at Asbury Park. Zimmerman
is a frequent collaborator for the O’Neill Playwrights
Conference. MFA: NYU Tisch.
Jessica Pabst (Costume Design) is a costume designer
whose recent credits include: The Whale (Lortel nom-
ination; Playwright's Horizons); Warrior Class and
The Bad Guys (Second Stage Uptown); Assistance
(Playwrights Horizons); Asuncion, The Hallway Trilogy, There Are No More Big Secrets, That Pretty Pretty, or The Rape Play (Rattlestick Theatre); 3 Pianos
(NYTW ); She Kills Monsters (Drama Desk Nomination), The Great Recession and Love/Stories or But You
Will Get Used To It (The Flea Theatre); Lidless (P73);
All Hands, Winter’s Journey, The Less We Talk, Dysphoria (Hoi Polloi); Be a Good Little Widow (Ars Nova);
Crawl Fade into White (13P); Civilization (All You
Can Eat), Vendetta Chrome, Quail (Clubbed Thumb);
The Metal Children (The Vineyard Theatre); Circle
Mirror Transformation, The Taming of the Shrew (The
Juilliard School); The Confidence Man, 12 Ophelias,
Blood Wedding, Never the Sinner (Woodshed Collective). Regional: 3 Pianos (A.R.T), A Permanent Image
(Boise Contemporary Theatre), This (Center Theatre
Group). Jessica is a member of Woodshed Collective.
Her work has also appeared at St. Ann's Warehouse,
NYU School of Opera, HERE, Dixon Place, Tribeca
Performing Arts, Red Bull Theatre, The Hangar Theatre, Dance Theatre Workshop, SPF, NYMF, and NY
Fringe Festival. Graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of
the Arts.
Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (Lighting Design) is a NY
-based lighting & video designer and puppetry artist.
Her designs have been seen in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Miami and internationally in Havana (Cuba), Prague (Czech Republic),
Lima (Peru) and Edinburgh (Scotland) in venues including the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center, HERE
Arts Center, St. Ann's Warehouse, ArtsEmerson, The
Ontological-Hysteric, Manhattan School of Music, Teatro Mella, The Zoo Roxy, The Flea Theater,
Joyce SOHO, The Chocolate Factory, REDCAT, and
Highways Performance Space. Recent: Matthew
Paul Olmos' So Go The Ghosts of Mexico Part 1, The Civilians' Paris Commune Elizabeth Swados and Cecilia
Rubino's From the Fire (winner of the 2011 MTM:
UK Musical Theatre Awards for Best Musical, Best
New Production, and Best Music), Conni's Avant
Garde Restaurant Returns in: The Mothership Landing
(2012 New York Innovative Theatre Awards Nominee for Lighting Design), The Foundry's How Much
is Enough, The Civilians’ In the Footprint, Mozart's
Don Giovanni with Isabel Milenski, Handel's Alcina
father pulled him from college to work in the warehouse, where he spent several years. During that
time, the dreadful tedium of the job made him miserable, and although writing became his outlet, his
depression led to an eventual nervous breakdown
that drove him to quit the factory. After beginning
his degree in English at Washington University and
eventually completing it at the University of Iowa,
Williams drifted around the country, taking odd jobs
and working with various writing and theatre groups.
In 1939, around the time he began to be known as
“Tennessee,” Williams received a Rockefeller Grant
and settled in New Orleans where he wrote for the
Works Progress Administration and secured a sixmonth contract with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The
Glass Menagerie, written in New Orleans in 194445, became his first major success, moving from its
opening in Chicago to Broadway within the year and
earning the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award
for the best play of the season. In 1947, A Streetcar
Named Desire was similarly successful, bringing him
the 1948 Pulitzer Prize. Over the next decade, he
went on to write seven more Broadway plays, gaining
international attention and earning a second Pulitzer
(for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955).
In 1947, after several brief affairs, Williams
met the part-time actor Frank Merlo, who became
his partner for the next fourteen years. The two traveled widely together, and eventually moved from
their apartment in Manhattan to Key West, Florida.
Merlo provided Williams with a source of stability against his worsening depression, serving as his
personal secretary and helping him battle his alcohol
abuse. In his forties and fifties, the playwright began
to decline emotionally, a downward spiral that was
only amplified by Merlo’s death from lung cancer in
1963. Although he continued to write extensively,
his work was poorly received and his public image
suffered from both his reputation as an addict and his
homosexuality. He subsequently became addicted to
prescription drugs which became a contributing factor in his death in 1983, when he was found in his
New York hotel having choked on a bottle cap. Williams was buried in St. Louis at his family’s request,
despite his desire to be cremated and buried at sea.
It is almost as if you were frantically constructing another
world while the world that you live in dissolves beneath
your feet, and that your survival depends on completing
this construction at least one second before the old habitation collapses.
Tennessee Williams
4
ased on several short stories and essays written
during his time with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, The
Glass Menagerie became Tennessee Williams’ first
widely successful work, gaining national attention
and critical respect. The play premiered at the Civic
Theatre in Chicago on December 26th, 1944, starring
Laurette Taylor as Amanda and Eddie Dowling as
Tom. Despite financial trouble and production problems, the play (and especially Taylor’s performance)
was an overwhelming success with critics. Recalling
the show’s premiere, Lloyd Lewis, a prominent Chicago critic, wrote of Taylor: “her descents into hysteria
are masterpieces of understatement, dramatic enough
that they force the audience to do the acting for her.”
One highlight of the run in Chicago, as recalled by
Williams himself, was his mother’s attendance. He
remembered her reaction to Taylor’s performance and
her backstage talk with the actress:
Mother began to sit up stiffer and stiffer. She looked
like a horse eating briars. She was touching her throat
and clasping her hands and quite unable to look at
me… Mother kept her composure but it was a severe
test. Later she came to see that to have been portrayed
by Laurette Taylor was the greatest tribute she could
have and her visit backstage became her favorite story.
However, despite fantastic reviews, the play did not
initially receive the audience numbers that Williams
wanted. After nearly being cancelled, it eventually
found its footing. It moved to Broadway the following
March.
On March 31, 1945, the play opened at the
Playhouse Theatre in New York with the original cast,
where it was enthusiastically received by audiences,
running for five hundred and sixty performances.
Lewis Nichols of The New York Times wrote of Williams, “He has a real ear for faintly sardonic dialogue,
unexpected phrases, and an affection for his characters.” Williams’ innovative structure and “memory”
drama were revolutionary for 1940s audiences, but
viewers were highly receptive to the new aesthetic. In
just a few months, the New York Drama Critics Circle
awarded it the best play of the season, stating in their
decision that the award was offered for the play’s “sensitive understanding of four troubled human beings.”
Since its premiere, the play has been produced
all around the world and received numerous Broadway
revivals. Considered to be an American classic, the
work has also been twice adapated for film, first in 1950
B
production history
Each age has its own version of The Glass Menagerie. Tom of the 1950s reflects the placid Eisenhower
years. In the 1960s it was Tom of the Age of Aquarius
whose travels might well carry him eastward. The
decade that began with protests over the Vietnam
War, the 1970s, brought forth a defiant Tom battling
against hypocrisy. In the 1980s Tom seemed more in
tune with himself and reminded audiences of conflicts within the American family. The review of the
1983 production by Benedict Nightingale called attention to the relevance of the play to a generation
concerned about good parenting.
Delma E. Presley, The Glass Menagerie as
American Memory
(starring Kirk Douglass and Jane Wyman) and then
again in 1987. Neither version received much critical
praise, and Williams even went so far as to criticize
the film created during his lifetime as the worst version of any of his works. After several radio productions during the 1950s, the play was adapted by CBS
Playhouse for a television broadcast in 1966. The most
enduring film version was ABC’s television production
in 1973, starring Katharine Hepburn, Sam Waterston,
Michael Moriarty, and Joanna Miles. All four received
Emmy nominations, with Moriarty and Miles going
on to win. The play has also received several notable
international adaptations, including an Indian version
(Akale or At a Distance, 2004) and an Iranian version
(Here Without Me, 2011).
polio
oliomyelitis (polio) is an infectious
viral disease that invades the brain
and spinal cord, often causing paralysis if the virus enters the bloodstream.
Polio originates from the poliovirus,
a human enterovirus first isolated by
Austrian physicians in 1908. The first
major epidemic in the United States
broke out in New York in 1916, causing
widespread panic and a renewed surge
in research towards a cure. In the 1930s
and 40s, the most prolific cases of polio were among children under the age
of thirteen. The search for a vaccine led
to competition among scientists, with
sometimes detrimental results. In 1935,
field trials for a new vaccine proved to
be disastrous and were later blamed for
further spreading the disease. Although
most infections cause no symptoms at
all, patients with severe infections that
have entered the central nervous system
can contract multiple types of paralytic
polio. It was not unusual for paralytic
polio patients to suffer from temporary
or permanent paralysis in certain limbs
or joints, resulting in permanent damage
or physical disabilities such as limps due
to asymmetrical growth.
P
debutantes
he figure of the “Southern belle,”
represented in Amanda Wingfield
in The Glass Menagerie, is stereotypically portrayed as a young woman
from an aristocratic family from the
“Old South,” the area inhabited largely
by plantation-owning families in the antebellum era. Amanda’s references to her
youth as a debutante indicate her family’s
former wealth and status, as young women from upper-class households were
usually required to marry into similarly
affluent families. The term “debutante”
literally comes from the woman’s “debut”
presentation at balls, often called cotillions, which would take place throughout the summer season each year. Young
debutantes were usually aged anywhere
from sixteen to nineteen years old, and
were expected to be fully versed in modern etiquette. Not only dress, posture,
and manners, but also correct grammar
and conversation were of the utmost importance for young eligible women, since
such factors were highly indicative of
class and social status.
T
continued from previous page
courtesy the independent online
by degrees something was happening much uglier and
more terrible than death." Tennessee's diary was witness
to the irrevocable: "R. makes the house tragic, haunted.
Must be put away, I suppose. An incredible horror to face."
In the State Hospital in Farmington, "Dementia
Precox (Schizophrenic) Mixed Type, Paranoid Predominating" was diagnosed, and insulin shock and Metrazol
therapy prescribed. After six years of hopeless treatment,
in 1943, Rose was given a bilateral prefrontal lobotomy,
sanctioned by Edwina Williams, her husband having given
up on Rose. Tennessee's only comment was a journal entry
in blank verse:
Grand, God be with you.
A chord breaking.
1000 miles away.
Rose. Her head cut open.
A knife thrust in her brain.
Me. Here. Smoking.
My father, mean as a
devil, snoring - 1000 miles
away.
Tennessee had last seen his sister in 1939, "her
talk was so obscene-she laughed and talked continual obscenities." His own obsession with mental illness remained
with him, as Leverich writes, "He knew that Rose's reality
was never far removed from his own."
Tennessee's success with A Streetcar Named Desire
allowed him to finance his sister's private care, and up until
his death he continued to pay for her upkeep, whilst intermittently blaming his mother (who died aged 94 in 1979)
for having allowed the operation. Williams' estate was left
to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, with
the bulk remaining in trust for his sister during her lifetime. With her death, the university received $7m.
Elegy for Rose
She is a metal forged by love
too volatile, too fiery thin
so that her substance will be lost
as sudden lightning or as wind.
And yet the ghost of her remains
reflected with the metal gone,
a shadow as of shifting leaves
at moonrise or at early dawn.
A kind of rapture never quite
possessed again, however long
the heart lays siege upon a ghost
recaptured in a web of song.
tennessee williams
st louis
t. Louis, Missouri was originally
transferred to the United States as
part of the Louisiana Purchase in
1803 and was incorporated as a city in
1822, a year after Missouri became an official state. The city’s stance during the
Civil War was divided, but despite the
economic setbacks of war and the blockade on river trade, St. Louis flourished under trade with Western states after the war
concluded. In 1904, St. Louis hosted the
World’s Fair and the Summer Olympics,
which provided the city with the money
to build Forest Park, the St. Louis Art
Museum, and the St. Louis Zoo. Religiously, St. Louis is home to many Roman Catholics having been a destination
for many Catholic immigrants during
the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite its
notorious crime rates, the city is home to
popular blues, jazz, and ragtime traditions,
and its economy thrives on service, manufacturing, transportation, and tourism.
S
cast
in order of appearance
Tom Wingfield ........ Danny Mensel
Amanda Wingfield ........ Melissa Martin
Laura Wingfield ........ Grace Elizabeth Interlichia
Jim O’Connor ........ Angel Morales
Being a “memory play,” The Glass Menagerie can be presented with unusual freedom
of convention. Because of its considerably delicate or tenuous material, atmospheric
touches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important part. Expressionism and
all other unconventional techniques in drama have only one valid aim, and that is a closer
approach to truth. When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not, or certainly
shouldn’t be, trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is actually or should be attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are ... These remarks are not meant as a
preface only to this particular play. They have to do with a conception of a new, plastic
theatre which must take the place of the exhausted theatre of realistic conventions if the
theatre is to resume vitality as a part of our culture.
Tennessee Williams, Production Notes to The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams, with his mother and sister, rose
context: 1930s america
“I take you back to an alley in St. Louis. The time, that quaint period when the huge middle class of America was matriculating from a
school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their
eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on
the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.”
Tom Wingfield, Act i Scene 1
1937 was a year that marked the beginning of the “depression within the Depression.” After a period of
growth generated by President Roosevelt’s New Deal, the economy once again declined, triggered by the backlash
of reflationary policies such as the Banking Act of 1935, which increased federal reserve requirements. The economy’s gradual recovery from its lowest point of production (around 1933) was interrupted and began to reverse,
inciting mass public frustration at higher unemployment rates and sparking labor riots around the country. One
such incident, the Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago, resulted in the deaths of ten steelworkers at the hands of
riot police during a demonstration supporting the steelworkers’ strike. The clash infuriated workers nationwide,
leading to further demonstrations and a rise in violent confrontations between unions and government or corporate police forces.
The tension between workers and industrialists exemplified the class and social struggles that were endemic to the Great Depression and in particular to the 1937 recession. While the economic consequences of the
1929 stock market crash were felt nearly universally, the gap between rich and poor was somewhat exacerbated
by the added negative effects that the working classes suffered, such as mass unemployment and decreased farm
prices. Financial insecurity prompted the upper classes to flaunt their wealth and status, even while they resented
being taxed for New Deal programs which catered to the poor. The Memorial Day Massacre and its violent aftereffects nationwide instilled the upper classes with a fear of class warfare and Communist revolution, as many
unions and political groups subscribed to the humanist ideals associated with Communism.
rose williams
an obituary
ose Isabel Williams was born in Gulfport, Mississippi in 1909, the first child of Edwina and Cornelius
Williams. Her brother Thomas (Tennessee) was born
three years later. Lyle Leverich writes in Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams, "Throughout his life, Williams
had two overriding devotions: his career as a writer and
his sister, Rose." Initially proud of his daughter with her
"expressive grey-green" eyes and auburn curls, their father
later turned against his two elder children; his relationship with his wife also deteriorated, and her resultant bias
against sex had a serious effect on Rose and Tom, "that of
deep and permanent injury ... Rose would remain a virgin
all her life."
As a child Rose was given to telling far-fetched
tales of hard-pressed family life, "perhaps trying to overshadow her brother's storytelling talents." But Tennessee
doted on his elder sister and felt a sense of betrayal when
she entered puberty and began to be interested in other
boys. It was an especially keen betrayal for Tennessee, who
would not come to terms with his own homosexuality until
his late twenties.
This distorted, dysfunctional background (there
was mental illness in both parents' families) inevitably influenced Williams's work. His backward-looking, overheated Southern Gothic of regret and frustrated passion
is suffused with the spirit of Rose, not only in The Glass
Menagerie, but in short stories such as "Portrait of a Girl
in Glass" and "The Resemblance Between a Violin Case
and a Coffin," in which he mourns "the magical intimacy
of our childhood together," splintered by the oncoming of
adolescence and sex.
Tennessee could take refuge in his "interior life
of memories and fantasies;" Rose had no such resources to
draw upon. She grew up outgoing and was remembered as
"very pretty and a bit standoffish." But by her early teens
"her good spirits were turning into a kind of hysteria; her
laughter was more nervous than natural; she was moody
and was developing a strange little hunch." Self-dramatization had tipped over into pessimism: "Everything was, as
she kept saying, 'just tragic!'"
By 1925, Rose's behavior had become too erratic
for her ailing mother to deal with, and it was decided to
send her away to school in Vicksburg-a further separation from her brother. Rose was preoccupied with pretty
clothes and looking beautiful; from exile in Vicksburg she
wrote to her brother in the languorous speech of a nascent
R
Tennessee Williams heroine, "Here I sit in agony my face
covered in green beauty clay ... I don't need to tell you how
striking the effect is." Her favorite song was "Poor Butterfly."
"Cruelly excluded" from the Williams family as
Tennessee and his developing literary career became the
battleground between their parents, Rose felt, at eighteen, unloved. Her relationships were inconstant: "My
beau hasn't arrived yet, he comes in the morning and stays
until one o'clock every night. I'm so tired of him I could
scream." Edwina, her mother, realized, "For the past few
years something unknown and fearful had been taking
place in the mind of our spirited, imaginative Rose." It
was hoped a good marriage would settle her, but her debut
was "a fiasco from the first," wrote Edwina. The local paper
ran a large photograph of a wistful-looking Rose announcing she would be "the recipient of marked social attention."
She was, for a month; but none of the boys asked for a
second date and, soon after, serious depression took hold.
Severe stomach pains had Rose believing someone was trying to poison her; she fought bitterly with her father, who
threatened to leave the family. She lacked self-confidence,
and her failure to stick at secretarial jobs was diagnosed by
her psychiatrist as a fear of sex.
Edwina determined that Rose should have respectable "gentleman callers" and wanted Tennessee to
bring home "some young friend” (Mrs. Williams "never
stopped talking," recalled a friend of Rose's). Yet Tennessee-still a virgin at 25, like his sister-hated her inept attempts at promiscuity: "Rose, I heard you offer yourself to
Colin, and I want you to know that you disgusted me."
At 26, Rose's life began to go seriously off-kilter.
Witness to a literary party given by her brother which got
out of hand, she "informed" on him to their mother. It was
a traumatic turning-point: "I hate the sight of your ugly old
face!" Tennessee screamed at her; the cruelest thing he'd
ever done, he said. In his diary, he wrote: "The house is
wretched. Rose is on one of her neurotic sprees-fancies
herself an invalid-talks in a silly dying-off way-trails
around the house in negligees. Disgusting." Re-reading
this three years later, Williams added a note: "God forgive
me for this!"
"A distance measured in silence" grew between the siblings, and the estrangement precipitated
the tragedy to come. Cornelius objected to the expense
of private treatment and threatened to put Rose in the
State Asylum. Tennessee found it all impossible to deal
with: "We have had not deaths in our family but slowly
continued on next page
a williams
album
The Glass Menagerie is more than a lament for a tortured sister ... it is an elegy for a lost innocence. The Depression
had already destroyed one American dream; the war destroyed another, and Tom looks back on the events which he
stages in his memory and imagination from the perspective of an immediately postwar world. Neville Chamberlain’s
piece of paper promising “peace in our time” was no less a product of desperation, no less a symbol of the triumph
of hope over despair, than Laura’s glass menagerie. Chamberlain’s piece of theatre, as he emerged from an aircraft
and waved the flag of surrender, believing it to be evidence of his triumph, was no less ironic than Amanda’s stagemanaged drama of the gentleman caller. In the end brute reality trampled on both.
Matthew C. Roudane, The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
williams with his mother, edwina, and rose
rose williams
laurette taylor as amanda
wingfield in the first production
of the glass menagerie
frank merlo & tennessee williams
williams in his key west studio
Women in 1930s America assumed a complicated and sometimes contradictory role, as they were often
forced to substitute their labor for household items or services that had previously been bought, even as they were
expected to retain their social position as housewives. Often, women were legally prevented from taking jobs
outside the home, which were considered to be reserved for men. Until the beginning of the second World War,
when jobs were freed up by the number of men entering military service, women were expected to concentrate on
holding the family together, which was in many ways a step backward from the women’s suffrage movement and
the advances of the 1920s.
Culturally, the United States underwent a different kind of transformation in the 1930s, focusing on the
creation of a national cultural identity. Even while artists experimented with new forms of expression, the country
was obsessed with the simplicity of its past. Intellectuals such as the New Humanists saw modern values like individualism as the root of the country’s social and economic problems, while traditional folk culture became increasingly popular. However, the impulse for modernism was never fully buried, as some dissatisfied thinkers began to
look towards the future for solutions. Mass media and the widespread introduction of the radio (which reached
over 80% of the population by 1939), proved to be crucial as a way of fostering a new community. Ultimately, the
decade served as a time when the “American way” became a fully-developed cultural idea, providing a basis from
which to integrate the developing divisions in society.
memory plays
Our production makes use of Tom’s
invitation into his own past to bring the audience, physically, inside of that past. Williams himself coined the concept of “plastic
theatre,” a type of drama which he characterizes as taking advantage of “the purely visual
things such as light and movement and color
and design,” which “are as much a native part
of drama as words and ideas are.” Other interpretations of plastic theatre spell out the
importance of creating a three-dimensional,
“structural” memory; the artistic and often
cinematic elements of it; and the singular way
that it enhances the playwright’s poetic language through every technical aspect of staging. In Richard Kramer’s article on sculptural drama in the 2002 Tennessee Williams
Annual Review, he writes, “In its simplest
terms, then, a plastic theatre is a theatrical
theatre as opposed to a literary (or literal)
one.” The plasticity of our take on this classic
drama is experienced through the intimacy
and detail that comes with physical closeness
and the sense of having intruded on a setting
as personal and specific as Tom’s own memory. Even as we see and hear the story
through the cloudy veil of slight inaccuracies and misplaced details, we undergo
the same narrative that Tom is feeling, with
all of its particular sights, smells, and regrets.
In this sense, we live through The Glass Menagerie from each character’s point of view,
experiencing both the metatheatre of Williams’s writing and the vividness of Tom’s
nostalgia.
In simplest terms, The Glass Menagerie sets forth Tom’s ‘reasons’ for his renunciation of the conventional goals of the society
in which he lives. The play is his memory, and his memory-not
a rational analysis of it-is his evidence. It is not necessary that
one accept the memory itself as a fact, the one fact of Tom’s existence. Tom’s world-from a distance "lit by lightning," the war in
Europe-is his description, not his defense. The world beyond, in
rags and at war, is beyond his responsibility, beyond his memory.
Paul T. Nolan
he genre of memory play originates with
The Glass Menagerie, but its influence has
been far-reaching. Though other playwrights have used framing techniques, Tennessee Williams’s original conception of the
frame-as-memory has been widely imitated
in a range of works and influenced many later
artists, including Harold Pinter and Neil Simon.
In a memory play like The Glass Menagerie, we watch the story progress through
the recollections of Tom Wingfield, our narrator. Williams’ structural metadrama, with
the theatre of Tom’s memories unfolding
within the constructed theatre we inhabit, allows for a wide range of technical variations,
given that memory lacks the realism inherent
in most types of story-telling. In his extensive production notes to the play, Williams
discusses the multiple ways in which sound,
lighting and scenic design can be incorporated into a dream-like atmosphere, emphasizing the nostalgia, “which is the first condition of the play.” Memory is selective, and
therefore the play’s content serves as a kind
of “highlights” reel, giving us only the crucial moments that lead towards the ultimate
point Tom (or Tennessee) is making. But the
form also reinforces the fact that memory is
something we cannot run from, and that, like
the small Wingfield tenement apartment, it
is both the structure through which we experience the world and the prison from which
we cannot escape.
T
When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass you think of
two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.
Tennessee Williams, Production Notes to
The Glass Menagerie
jonquills