A Mother's Day Post

Tennessee Williams' Aesthetic of Reminiscence 

by Augustin J Correro

Rose & baby Tom Williams with their mother Edwina

This time last year, my life came to a surreal halt. Time moved, but not in its usual fashion. Like a Salvadore Dali dreamscape, everything was recognizable but wrong. Balls that were in the air either suspended or sank slowly to through gravity while I watched them drop. I was paralyzed for weeks and weakened for months after that. The balls I let drop, I knew would either break or bounce, and I’d have to pick them up or clean them up someday, but not whatever day it was—which even that was confusing and immaterial; the days all melted together for a space of time I can’t even pinpoint now. I even failed to complete a triptych of blog posts in this very blog because I was so incapacitated that all I could do was to make sure the shows I was directing were going up and my duties were complete at my 9-to-5 job.

On May 13, 2016, the Friday after Mother's Day, my mother died in a sudden, horrific circumstance. To make matters worse, I had been estranged from her for about five years. Unpacking all of those emotions, thoughts, and questions meant that I’d often find all my things on the floor when it came to lay out plans for anything else. I’m still not sure if it was good or bad that two of the three plays I’ve directed since then have dealt primarily with grief and dying. I like to think it helped me to unpack. We always hope our theatre is cathartic.

As I write this, it’s the evening startling her death-day and the first Mother's Day following her death. I continue to unravel the complexities of a relationship rich with positive and negative sentiments. It makes me think of the bittersweet aesthetic of reminiscence in the plays of Tennessee Williams, and it makes me feel less alone in the world.

Laurette Taylor originating the role of
Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.

Something that continues to touch us in his plays is the tender, sometimes painful treatment of people and places that we’ve lost. Williams was a trailblazer in his presentation of affectionate agony, displaying a masterful expression of remorseful ecstasy. He makes us pause and, almost subconsciously, consider how we move about in our own relationships with those around us. In the expanse of a few hours, he forces us to reckon with the nasty and the glorious, usually from the same people. We say “Yes—that’s it. It’s complicated. And it’s simple”. Mel Gussow wrote in the New York Times the day Williams died, “Though his images were often violent, he was a poet of the human heart.” Ain’t that always the way? Violent, gentle. poignant, terrible. Human relations can be messy, but Williams had a way of framing it with frankness and truth.

Tom’s treatment of Laura and Amanda as he looks back on them in retrospect is perhaps the most famous example. It doesn’t stop there. Two of his even more retrospective, pseudo-autobiographical plays, Vieux Carre and Something Cloudy, Something Clear treat moments plucked from he past with even more care than a shy girl treats a glass unicorn. Looking back on snarling matches with landladies who just want to be loved, actresses locked in feuds, and even his estranged lover Frank Merl, Williams offers us a glimpse into what is more important than any well-aimed shot to someone’s ego: the time and the memory of the time, and knowing that someone, something, someplace mattered.

Katharine Hepburn's Violet Venable  remembers
her son Sebastian in the film version of Suddenly Last Summer.

His own regret over having not been there for his sister leading up to her lobotomy, his never really reconciling with his father, his estrangement from Frank leading up to his death, and so many other transgressions he assigned himself fault for gave Williams a unique perspective on this topic of idealized remorse. His characters would grapple with similar longing for things long-lost throughout his plays, and they certainly play well: Blanche and Alan; Alma and the John Buchanan of her childhood; a crone and Lord Byron, perhaps her one true love; Amanda and Blue Mountain; Serafina and Rosario; Violet and Catharine remembering Sebastian;even that something unspoken between Skipper and Brick. Their resolution would never come from a deus ex machina. These characters received resolution through acceptance of the situation—cherishing the memory, but understanding the immutability of their circumstances.

It’s through his non-judgmental handling of people who have trespassed against others that we’re able to identify with the injurer and the injured. He exalts the tender memory without shying away from the rough edges of recollection. The fights and swears are given equal footing with the kind actions, but the kinder parts shine more brightly because there’s something of them that’s inherently more pure and true about them.

This is how theatre heals and nourishes the spirit. This is how it touches people from all walks of life. It’s why it’s vital. It’s why I do it. This one’s for you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day.

Tennessee & Edwina Williams

Coloring Classics

Actors, Casting, Race, and Tennessee Williams

by Augustin J Correro

This Blog Post Is Equipped with Three Disclaimers and a Trigger Warning for Everyone’s Safety.

Trigger Warning: This post contains one writer’s ideas regarding theatrical production in regards to race, racial symbolism, and other race-and-ethnicity-centered topics. It centers around casting, concept, and actors.

     In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, there is a ballet in the second act performed by Siamese characters that depicts the story of the “Small House of Uncle Thomas”. The story is adapted by the dancers from Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s 19th century novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The selection of this particular story as is a tribute to the King’s children’s governess Anna, a white English woman. The anti-slavery message is pointed, but in The King and I, as is the case in so many classics, the colonial white savior comes to teach a valuable lesson to the less “evolved” characters. The result is that the message may be delivered in a way that isn’t most effective.

American Slavery, as explained by Siamese dancers,
as told by Rodgers & Hammerstein

     But what if Anna is a black actor? Does her place as the symbol of the savior-teacher mean something else (something more?) if she’s not white? Can it? Must it?

     Examining to another classic, what happens if Romeo and Juliet is cast primarily (or entirely) with Latinx actors? While it can change the meaning of the production, must it? Can it not? Does it have to? Is it different for each audience member?

     Theatre makers make several considerations when it comes to casting, play selection, hiring, and staging. Sometimes symbols get lost—especially in classics in which the symbols can easily be taken for granted. As you might have guessed, it’s no different for Tennessee Williams. This essay attempts to scratch the surface of the topics of race and ethnicity in casting and producing the plays of Tennessee Williams.

     A conversation has been ignited in New Orleans regarding the place of black bodies in Williams’ plays, and the place of Williams’ plays in a world where the value of black bodies has increased exponentially since the plays were written. I can think of no better setting for this conversation than in New Orleans. Recently, I enjoyed a panel discussion prior to Southern Rep Theatre’s production of Sweet Bird of Youth which explored this topic in detail. A panel of all African-American writers described their connections to the universality of Williams’ work while also negotiating the sensitivities of racially diverse casting and a lack of in-written black characters in classic plays (The panel description can be viewed midway down the page here). While some of the opinions expressed might be unpopular, this writer and theatre-maker agrees that the conversation must be explored. For various reasons, I will not be discussing the symbolism in that specific production of Sweet Bird, but will instead pose several “what-if” scenarios from A Streetcar Named Desire.

First Disclaimer: The White Man Has a Head Start

It is worth stating that white actors have a massive advantage in regards to the availability of roles in theatre, film, and television. This is because the dominant voices in storytelling have been white for centuries in Western Civilization. Naturally, those white storytellers write white characters. The same is generally true for male writers writing stories which primarily concern men. It is something theatre-makers should be conscious of, although there is no one monolithic solution to inequity in opportunity. It’s absolutely true of Tennessee Williams, but rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water and stopping production of Williams altogether, we choose to continue producing Williams plays with this conundrum as a consideration. Ergo, if we wait around for more roles for actors of color to play, the gulf between them and opportunity will only continue to expand, since there’s such a wealth of white writing, and white writers will continue to tell their stories.

Second Disclaimer: 

The playwright in question was white. He tried as best as he could figure, as a moneyed white gay man in the mid-1900s, to represent the underrepresented. We therefore assume for the purpose of this essay that any racist ideals he ascribed to were not purposeful or malicious, and that he was not in fact the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. There is evidence of a continually evolving racial and cultural understanding in his published and unpublished writing.

Third Disclaimer:

This writer is also white, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  

Terrence Howard & James Earl Jones in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

So How Do We Inject Actors of Color Into Classics?

An oversimplification would be, “you just do”. However, there are some pitfalls when you are faced with two devices: stunt casting and problematic symbolism.

Stunt casting is rarely the actor’s fault. It’s usually a tool by a director or a producer in order to jar audiences into buying tickets. Stunt casting is when an actor is selected not because they’re right or ideal for the role, but because they’re popular, or might be incendiary, or for some other unartistic rationale not rooted in the text. Think of a community theatre production of A Streetcar Named Desire where the local grande dame and president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary at age 45 is selected to play Blanche—or worse, Stella. That’s stunt casting. It’s sin is obliviousness or willfully ignoring the problems it creates.

Symbolism is more nuanced—it’s trickier to sort out when it’s an issue. Sometimes, it’s not. There are plays which don’t use symbolism, in which case, the race of the actors really has no repercussion on the story. Of course, it’s good to be sensitive that the only black character isn’t a villain or a minstrel-type character, or that the only woman isn’t a loose floozy, or that the women don’t talk to one another exclusively about men (see: Bechdel Test, flawed but a point of interest). However, while it’s easy to mistake Williams for a steadfast realist, considering wide-release films and traditional stagings would convince audiences of that misconception, Williams used symbolism. He used symbolism a lot—and often the symbols were bodies onstage.

Problematic symbolism happens when the semiotics are ignored or are socially irresponsible. Semiotics is defined as the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. It is a realm of considerations which must be carefully examined, even if they could be easily overlooked. So: The entire cast is white except for Stanley and the Negro Woman. Even the Mexican woman selling flowers is a white woman (oops!). But then Stanley rapes Blanche, meaning that literally the only black man in the story is a rapist. This is a challenge for the director to work through before making this choice. Here’s why: if there is a dominant social narrative which is supported by the story being told onstage, but which is an unjust narrative, choices should be reconsidered. The dominant social narrative here is that black men are a danger to white women, that they are rapists, ill-bred, crude, and trifling (i.e., they will have sex with you and your pregnant sister, whether you like it or not). Because this is a dominant social narrative for large swaths of the country, the producer either feeds the unjust narrative, or doesnt: it can’t be neither. Stanley as a symbol represents a new world order which is both tender and overpowering, and this gets lost if he literally represents the fear white women have of virile black men.

So Where Does That Leave The Brilliant Actor I Want To Play Stanley?

Do we just not cast this guy because we’re afraid of the implications of a black male body committing rape? Well, no. This is where color-conscious casting comes into play. Color-conscious casting is not the same as color-blind casting. The latter operates on a defunct assumption that race means nothing to anyone, and that there are no implications of different colored bodies in different spaces. It sounds great, but it doesn’t really function. Even if the person casting decides it’s color-blind, that doesn’t mean that the audience or the actors involved share that color-blindness.

Color-conscious casting is much more complex. It’s casting with the understanding that there are implications to the choices as well as a separate, unequal pool of opportunities for actors of color, and choosing to craft and aesthetic and execute a production with that in mind. Again using Streetcar as an example, I am made to recall the 2012 Broadway production directed by Emily Mann starring Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker. While Blanche, Stanley, and Mitch were black, Stella and other members of the cast were of various skin tones and racial and ethnic origins. This meant that Stanley was not the only black body, and that the heroes were not uniformly white.

Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker in A Streetcar Named Desire

Common Producer Complaint: But Actors of Color Just Don’t Come Out!

This is a serious challenge for producers. Even Broadway productions have to make pointed efforts to invite and entice actors of color to show up for auditions. The summit of theatre arts has been long painted out of reach for communities of color, so there’s work to be done. 

What should be undone is the snarl of ideas that historical precedent and historical accuracy are valid reasons to bar bodies of color from opportunities. 

We as theatre-makers should do as much as we can to see the work of artists of color, whose platforms might not be as prominent as white artists. You may even have to go where black, brown, red, and yellow people are. The next step is to cast who is best for roles, period. From time to time, this may mean casting someone who is talented and right for the role who has a small skills gap. If it means that your director must work more to give an actor of color some additional coaching because he/she/they didn’t get to go to theatre camp each summer, it may be what needs to happen to reflect the community in which you’re presenting the work. 

It’s Not All Bad News, Though.

Recently, I read an article, the title of which was misleading: For the First Time Ever an Asian-American Has Been Cast in a Classic Tennessee Williams Role. It reads, "For the First Time Ever an Asian American Has Been Cast in a Classic Tennessee Williams Role".

LaKesha Glover in Small Craft Warnings. Photo by Ride Hamilton

At first sight, this would imply that no Asian-American ever has been cast in any iconic Williams role. Upon reading the article, it’s only about Maggie Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Either way, it’s a step in the right direction. TWTC’s production of The Rose Tattoo Featured an actor of Thai descent as Serafina Delle Rose in 2016. In 2015, Small Craft Warnings featured two African-American actors in roles almost exclusively ever played by white actors: they were messy characters, but they were situated in a room full of otherwise messy characters (i.e., the full burden of being violent, loud, and flawed didn’t fall summarily on the backs of the black folk).

People are symbols in Williams. There’s a responsibility that comes with storytelling and wielding symbols. Race and color do carry meaning. These three facts are intertwined, and should be handled with same same care as any other aspect of a production.

In summary, if we expect plays by Williams to be exalted in the same way as plays by Shakespeare, which I think they deserve, the doors to a multicultural society of actors, designers, and storytellers must be open so that they can lay hands on his plays. Williams’ plays are American. Now America is changed—the lens through which we view her playwright’s theatre must be checked and adjusted from time to time.

A Lifelong Fan

This Essay is an excerpt from the 2017 Krewe of Armeinius Ball Program.

“It was just not something you talked about. They could put you away—and they did put people away.” This is how Armeinius member Albert Carey recalls the topic of homosexuality in the 1950s. In a period when attraction to the same sex was considered a symptom of mental illness, Albert remembers, “You couldn’t even breathe the word ‘gay’. I just had the feelings but didn’t have the words.” In 1957, Tennessee Williams changed Albert’s life. When he attended Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Civic Theatre, he witnessed a father and a son having a tense but tender conversation about the kinds of feelings Albert had, but which he could not name. Victor Jory’s Big Daddy didn’t care who Brick loved. Having been raised by “two old sisters”, the patriarch was more concerned with the wellbeing and sobriety of his son, played by William Daniels, than who he slept beside.

Albert Carey with TWTC Co-Artistic Directors Augustin J Correro & Nick Shackleford

“The next day I went to the library…and that’s how he saved my life.” Albert began reading everything he could by Williams and other gay writers. It was a revelation. Gradually, Albert would become involved in Gay Mardi Gras, which he’s been a part of ever since. In 2009, he worked with Tim Wolff on the film “Sons of Tennessee Williams”, a documentary on the gay Krewes. According to Albert, Wolff saw Tennessee Williams as the most “out” American of his day, which accounts for the title. To many, Williams was a guide in the 1960s and ‘70s, as the community was coming of age. Williams had already blazed the trail—enduring the barbs and snares and proving it could be done while remaining in one piece. Just like the gay community over the past seventy years, Williams and his works were often dubbed “squalid” and “perverse”. In spite of the harshest criticism, however, the community and Williams pressed forward. Albert has had the pleasure of watching Gay Mardi Gras develop since its outset, now a cultural pearl of New Orleans.

Albert and Tim Wolff don’t simply imagine the connection between Williams and Gay Mardi Gras. Unquesitonably, they both have a unique place in the cultural zeitgeist of the Crescent City. The portrait of the French Quarter in A Streetcar Named Desire is perhaps the most iconic ever drawn. Today, Albert commits to the cultivation of Williams’ theatrical legacy in New Orleans: since its inception, Albert has been a supporter of the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans. TWTC, as it is called for short, is the first theatre company in the country to focus on the works of America’s greatest playwright. Albert sees his support of the company as a debt he’s repaying to Williams. “It’s because of him I realized the beauty of us all. It’s not squalid—it’s not anything that has to be hidden. It can be seen; it can be shown the light of day,” he remarks, reflecting on how Williams enriches his life. Albert now serves on the Board of Directors for TWTC, and he is happy to champion the group which showcases the beauty of Williams’ language, the abundance of his humor, and the bravery to showcase subjects which need to be explored.

TWTC is completing its second season this March and April with The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore starring Janet Shea, playing at the Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center (2525 Burgundy). The company is dedicated to presenting productions which are unique, entertaining, and challenging to its audiences, including less well-known plays by Williams. It engages dozens of local artists each year to present outstanding works for locals and tourists alike. Perhaps most importantly, TWTC strives to reach new audiences, especially those who have had little-to-no exposure to Williams—particularly young audiences. One high school student from Kenner expressed “I never knew Tennessee Williams was like this!” TWTC hopes to reach more students and new theatre-goers each season.

As it continues to grow and to preserve Williams’ enduring legacy, TWTC is honored to count Albert Carey among it supporters both in the audience and in his service to its mission. Perhaps there’s another young person out there who needs to hear Williams’ life-changing words.

Don't forget to grab your tickets to The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams, starring Janet Shea, running March 23-April 2 at the Sanctuary Cultural Arts Center!

www.twtheatrenola.com