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

Dangerous Ladies (If They Need To Be)

Women Who Win in Williams

by Augustin J Correro

  In one of Tennessee Williams’ most famous plays, Maggie ponders the titular question: “What its the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?” She muses “…Just staying on it, I guess, as  long as she can…” The notion of survival as a kind of victory reoccurs in Williams’ plays. It’s a sometimes cynical, sometimes encouraging idea: when faced with a world that designates us all as fugitives in our own skins, to get out of bed each day and confront the ambivalent old universe takes courage and gumption. The victory is elevated when we overcome severe circumstances and insurmountable foes. Williams smashed his characters’ backs against walls which, like a booby trap in an arcane temple, inched closer and closer to the ledge of the abyss. His characters are made to chose between leaping into oblivion or clawing up the wall. No characters are faced with more unbeatable odds than the three women who headline the one acts in our current production, Tennessee Williams: Dangerous Birds (If Agitated). When it comes to uphill climbs, these women scale Everest. 

One such indomitable character is Miss Sylvia Sails in Sunburst, a retired actress who has recently suffered a stroke, and has holed herself up in a hotel room to lick her wounds. After a couple of days, the buzzards begin to circle. A pair of devious young crooks admit themselves into her suite one night and hold her captive. Their singular focus is the Sunburst Diamond on her finger, which they unhappily learn is stuck on the digit. As they plot ways to dismember Miss Sails without stirring suspicion, she allows them to succumb to their own foolishness, and stalls them until escape is possible. In the broadest strokes, Miss Sails overcomes her plight by letting the criminals wear themselves out. Even when immobilized, helpless, and endangered, she exhibits poise, patience, and cunning to avail herself of the situation.

The diamond on the finger could easily be compared to Williams’ own fortune and fame, which became the object of concern for multitudinous hangers-on later in his life. Perhaps what he was indicating in this text is that while he may have appeared to be easy pray for sycophantic ne’er-do-wells, he wasn’t a sitting duck. 

Another powerhouse femme fatale featured in Dangerous Birds is Queen May in The Pronoun “I”. This rarely staged piece for the lyric theatre looks nothing like most viewers’ perceptions of Williams’s theatre. It takes place centuries ago and centers on an aging, despised queen who is considered to be a maniacal despot, simply for having up-ended the patriarchy. She chooses her sexuality over the demands of others, and soon enough there are pitchforks and torches at the palace gates. She boldly, even ironically stares down her adversaries with a fatalistic wit, and through cunning and ruthlessness manages to come out on top (literally and figuratively). It’s a striking reversal, but one might wonder if it be so surprising if it were a male character using similar traits to outwit his opponents.

With Queen May as a surrogate, Williams took a sledgehammer to the wall of expectations, pulverizing the idea that he needed to stay inside of a pleasant, predictable cell. He did so in this lyric piece, tinkering with both style and subject. Without spoiling the play, the chameleon act of Queen May could also be a greater metaphor for Williams’ ability to adapt to new challenges and cleverly dodge critical slings and arrows.

The most mystifying and metaphorical of the three women our night of plays chronicles is the bedraggled showgirl known only as the Gnädiges Fräulein. The symbolism in the play named after the hapless heroine has a life of its own. On its surface, the cartoonish burlesque deals with two women named Polly and Molly as they get stoned on the porch, are harassed by a menacing bird, and molest and marvel at the Fräulein, who is a tenant at Molly’s guesthouse. The comedy of this piece is entirely situational, since the characters are not much changed by its conclusion. Instead it feels like a hamster wheel of cruelty and slapstick.

The symbolism can offer insight, but isn’t a necessity. Breaking the characters down to their most basic desires, we see that Molly, the landlady who sells standing room to her rooming house and whose business focuses on quantity over quality is an obvious allusion to Broadway producers. Polly is a society reporter, so she obviously represents the press. With a little bending of the imagination, it’s not hard to see that the vicious Cocalooney Birds stand for social rabble who wish to gobble up rotten bits and pick on easy targets—a cynical view of the uninformed public, perhaps; and the character named Indian Joe is a sort of American ideal who is interested in nothing and who nobody can keep interested for long. So where does that leave our champion, the Gnädiges Fräulein?

If the showgirl is dependent upon the landlady, and the landlady is dependent upon the press, and both press and landlady have a symbiotic/parasitic relationship with the rabble. The showgirl, then, must represent the artist. Simultaneously, everyone is obsessed in one way or another with the ideal that is Indian Joe, but nobody can draw a bead on him. If this all seems complicated and heady, that’s because it is—and completely unnecessary to one’s enjoyment of the slapstick tornado that is The Gnädiges Fräulein. The poop jokes and sight gags more than prop this play up—they elevate it to high low comedy interspersed with poetic brilliance. If one wants to delve deeper, the metaphor can be further plunged, of course—the showgirl’s signature trick featured catching a fish in her jaws, a trick that the landlady demands she repeat several times a day. It speaks to Williams’ frustration with being expected to crank out brilliant reproductions of earlier plays for a general audience, or else be treated as a washed-up pariah. The woman is pecked over by the bird, ignored by the Indian, and treated as a pitiful novelty by the press. She endures repeated beatings and indignities, but even to the last moment, her fierce spirit refuses to be extinguished.

Hers is the ultimate victory of a cat on a hot tin roof. She stays on, long beyond expectation and reason, because to give up is to be defeated. The Fräulein, like the Queen and Miss Sails, obliterate the odds and press on. They defy the ambivalent universe and claim their victory against relentless adversity. While they’re not as often celebrated as Blanche, Maggie, or Amanda, these three ladies featured in Dangerous Birds are the epitome of the fighting, unflagging women Tennessee Williams idolized.

      Whether you come for low-brow fun, lofty metaphor, or a night spent watching an incredibly talented cast, join us for Dangerous Birds (If Agitated), and watch these women of Williams kick some cosmic ass.

Dangerous Birds (If Agitated) Now Playing through Nov 20

Friday - Sunday 8pm at Phillips Bar Uptown (733 Maple at Cherokee)

www.twtheatrenola.com

Photo Credits: Bunny Love as the Gnädiges Fräulein, Mary Pauley as Miss Sylvia Sails, & Abby Botnick as Queen May by Ride Hamilton / Abby Botnick & Pearson Kunz by James Kelley

A Playwright In Reviews

Part Two: This Is What It Looks Like

Welcome back. We have been on a short break as this blogger recently lost a close family member, but here we are with Part Two in our triptych series on Williams critique!

Last post, we deconstructed a real review of a production of Summer and Smoke. This time, we've constructed a fictional review of an imaginary production of King Lear by William Shakespeare, a brilliant play considered to be one of the "Big Four" tragedies. This way, we're not selecting an unknown playwright or a living one to be our prototype for a faux-critique; instead we're going to let into another indisputably great playwright who is also dead, that way we won't be taking any more cheap shots than one might when eviscerating Mr. Williams. To highlight how it comes across when scholars, reviewers, critics, and commentators compare all of Williams to A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, we will spend almost all of this review comparing Lear to "better works" of Shakespeare: comedies. Who doesn't like a comedy better, right?!

    King Lear has it all: mistaken identity, familial turmoil, duels, and that signature Shakespeare flair. This production, however, lacks the romantic, star-crossed sparkle of Romeo and Juliet or the Bard’s other triumph A Midsummer Night’s Dream, leaving something sweet to be desired of England’s foremost playwright. Lear blows until it cracks its cheeks, but with no love-lorn payoff. To be fair, it seems the playwright was experimenting with a decidedly un-romantic form when he set pen to paper, and rumor has it his life was fraught with suffering and fear of his own mortality, so it’s no wonder the work is unfocused. Still, there are some moments that make this current production worthwhile.

  Gabrielle Onion’s direction tries to salvage a rusty old ship which should have stayed sank on its maiden voyage. If it were not for her efforts and the work of the scenic designer Saul Giamatti and lighting designer Katya Rasputin, the two-and-a-half hour slog would be unwatchable. This writer feels that the playwright might have better stuck to his tried and true skills before delving into foreign territory.

Kitty McGee as Cordelia is laudable as Cordelia, Lear’s daughter most like Juliet, or perhaps even Hermia. McGee can be seen mining the sub-par interactions at the top of the play for all it’s worth, carving out a genuinely likable portrayal of a character we wish we could see more of. In her scene, she’s forced to make a Sophie’s choice between flattering her father, muscularly played by Bill Beau Baggins, and telling him the truth and earning his scorn. Tugging at our heartstrings, McGee elects truth over flattery, professing her true devotion to her father, thus setting him at odds with her. He banishes her, and we hope to see more of McGee’s Cordelia as she tries to win her way back into her father’s good graces. But our hopes, like Cordelia’s, are dashed.

Rather than following Cordelia’s journey as we do the lovers in Midsummer, R&J, or even the farcical Twelfth Night, Shakespeare instead opts to parade before us a gross procession of figures we can’t imagine we could associate ourselves with. The playwright’s less savory notions find a voice in this throng of damnable buffoons. Jerry Jones as Kent and Tony Braxton as Gloucester are two of the only lights in the dark tunnel that is this narrative of degradation, but that’s come to be expected of the two veterans. Another promising performance is that of Edgar, played by P. Michael Jackson, as he carves his way through the mire of a plot-line. 

While Shakespeare is no stranger to a sub-plot and he’s shown some agility with maneuvering them before, Lear lacks the fluidity of Romeo & Juliet that you might expect, as it jumps from place to place with no regard for helping the audience to understand the passage of time. At once we are at the castle of Goneril, the lascivious and over-done daughter of Lear—written with a heavy hand and little nuance, and the next we find ourselves at Regan’s castle (she is the other daughter of Lear, and it is hard to distinguish whether we like her character less than Goneril, or if it’s a plodding and self-aware performance by Charlotte O’Dair).

The playwright uses the husbands as set-dressing, trotting out his old trick of placing women at the fore, but the women we meet are detestable. Therefore, we’re left to watch the titular role of Lear bombast his way through excruciatingly indulgent speeches. At the end of the day, after the storm has passed (an unwieldy metaphor which Shakespeare attempts but does not see through), everyone is either dead or miserable, and we lack the pathos and uplift of seeing our Montagues and Capulets seeing the error of their ways or of the frolicking lovers ultimately seeing their wedding days, with all the strange magic undone.

If Lear is an attempt to cast such magic, perhaps it’s less of a spell and more of a curse. Congratulations to the cast and creative team for the hard work they’ve done attempting to breath life into sub-par Bard.

As you might have guessed by now, the goal here has been to illuminate the way this single standard of style for a playwright is unfair. It's not used for any other playwright, but for Williams it is extremely common? Why might that be?

The final post in our triptych of reviews will be after we open our upcoming show The Rose Tattoo! Get your tickets now!

www.twtheatrenola.com

A Playwright in Reviews

Part One: Williams vs. Williams
by Augustin J Correro

Thanks to everyone who's been following our blog during our Inaugural Season. We're kicking off season two in the same vein as our very first post back in August of 2015. This is the first of a three-post series about the critical reception of Tennessee Williams' plays, focused specifically on reviews.

There's something that happens to writers when reviewing Williams plays that can only be described as a phenomenon. Whereas in most situations, a production will be considered by its own flaws and merits, reviewers almost reflexively beat up on the playwright if that playwright is Tennessee Williams. This "Tennessee Williams Punching Bag Syndrome" is probably rooted in a multitude of factors: his iconic works being so widely known, his besmirched celebrity during the 1960s, his refusal to adhere strictly to one style as an artist, and perhaps the notion that attacking him is less of a low blow than attacking a member of any given artistic community (who is still living and needs to eat).

This isn't to say that reviewers and critics don't write thoughtful reviews, or even that a review can't be thoughtful and include some of these over-arching factors. What TWPBS does, however, is create a lopsided context for the reader. It creates a passively hostile environment in which it's vaguely clear that the playwright should have stayed in his corner instead of writing plays in a style less familiar to the reviewer. It invites the reader to dinner party with Williams but makes it *just a little* uncomfortable for everyone. If that sounds convoluted, that's because it is. It's systemic. 

Picking out one of these micro-biases will help to illustrate. Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire. These are considered "The Big Three". Branching out from the Big Three, there's a slightly more expansive canon which (depending on the level of fandom) may include between five and seven other plays. It is widely accepted that the Big Three are the standard against which all Williams plays be measured. Returning to the dinner party metaphor, consider the awkward feeling you might have if the parents kept bragging on your date's ex-lovers while you try to enjoy your meal. This is problematic. 

It's problematic because Williams wrote over a hundred plays, thirty-three of which were full-length, and only a handful of which are, or truly resemble, the Big Three. If these three are the standard, it's easy for a reviewer to downplay the virtues of other spectacular plays simply on the merit that they're dissimilar to Cat, Streetcar, or Menagerie. While this may strike the writer as particularly damaging (it's only one review, after all) — incrementally and over time, it has been extremely unhelpful in identifying and criticizing the hundred-plus other plays in a fair and balanced way.

This phenomenon began in Williams' lifetime, once his Big Three had already made their marks. Critics expected him to turn out more of the same. When he didn't do so, it became fashionable to berate him for it. Without a Blanche to cling to, critics felt duped and betrayed, and chose to take it out on Williams, the seeming perpetrator of this diabolical and un-Streetcar-ly ruse. This continued after his death, and few writers have dared to challenge the convention. What I hope to do here is to challenge the reviewers, present and future, to look at Williams' plays not exclusively as lesser versions of the Big Three, but instead on their own virtues and failings.

HEY! ARE YOU SAYING YOU THINK CRITICS ARE DUMB???!!!
I should probably take a moment here to point out reviewers and critics are vital to a theatre landscape. They are often unsung heroes who, amid deadlines, deluges of requests to see multitudinous productions, and paltry word count edicts, still commit to helping further the discourse on theatre and inform audience members about what's happening in their communities (read: get people into seats). With that said, many critics and reviewers welcome conversation about what they write, as art is an ongoing conversation.

As an example, below are some excerpts from a review of a production of Summer and Smoke from Richmond, Virginia, in which I am boldfacing every overt comparison to Cat, Menagerie, or Streetcar or the style thereof, and underlining the less apparent comparisons, or comparisons to other plays. Fred Kaufman, whose astute review neither pulls punches nor shows any intention of detraction from Williams' brilliance, is a great example of a mindful review which is still informed by a climate of underlying bias toward the more canonical works.

Virginia Rep’s ‘Summer and Smoke’ is a masterful production of a troubled play

by Fred Kaufman

After becoming the toast of Broadway with the staging of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams went to work on his next play, Summer and Smoke.  Almost as soon as Williams finished the play, he realized that it was too diffuse, murkily metaphysical, and melodramatic. He ripped into the script, abandoning subplots and allowing the poetic tragedy of his heroine to emerge and to flower.

But this massive rewrite of Summer and Smoke was finished too late to use as a replacement—rehearsals for the London production were well under way—so the original play was doomed to hold the stage and, predictably, to fail.  The rewrite was retitled as Eccentricities of a Nightingale.  By the time he released Eccentricities, Williams’ star was on the wane and the play succumbed to disinterest.  It has been thankfully revived in the years since and, for me, is the gem he was looking for when he originally sat down to write Alma’s tale.

...

Even though Essentricities is a much better play, Summer and Smoke is still pure Southern Gothic Tennessee Williams.

The play takes place in turn of the century Mississippi.  The plot concerns Miss Alma, an overly proper and overly nervous Southern spinster who lives with her harsh clergyman father and her mentally ill mother.  She lives next door to young Dr. John who has just returned home from medical school to practice with his father.  The stodgy Alma has been in a suppressed love and lust fantasy with the free spirited John ever since they were children.

We find out that John is more than carefree, he is self-destructive.  He is addicted to alcohol and risky sexual behavior.  Despite her own nervous condition, Alma makes excuses to spend time with him.  Each episode ends badly with Alma resisting John’s boozy flirtations.  John takes up with a low class Mexican tart in furtherance of his need for raw sexuality and risky personal behavior (no stereotypes there).

Alma seeks the aid of John’s father when she learns John intends to marry his tart.  The tart’s father shoots John’s father in a pretty far-fetched scene.  Of course this tragedy sobers John who does a 180, loses the tart and finds respectability.

By this time Alma, having been rejected and afraid of dying alone cloisters herself in her father’s house and refuses to see John for months.  We can assume she has had a nervous breakdown.  When she recovers she is stripped of her good manners and seems to have been philosophically and morally changed.  She goes to John and attempts to seduce him, but it is too late.  He is now the prim and proper gentleman engaged to a good girl.  Their ships have passed in the night and Alma is devastated to the point where she displays risky sexual behavior at the end of the play.  The roles have been reversed.

...

Williams is never clear as to why John is so self-destructive.  We know his mother died when he was a boy and can assume his father’s reputation is near impossible to live up to.  Whether this justifies his behavior is speculative.  Williams abandons John’s dilemma in Eccentricities but finally finds the answer to this character problem in his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  We know why Brick self-destructs.  We understand it is a mixture of repressed homosexuality and the inability to live up to his youthful glory football days.

We’re also are never fully satisfied with why John and Alma just miss being happy together.  Their dramatic arcs overshoot each other, leaving both of them unhappy and unfulfilled.  This is also Tennessee Williams’ style.  No one goes home happy.  But it doesn’t feel completely honest.

The job of making it honest belongs to the actor.  Even problematic Williams is rich material to mine and an actor’s delight.  And the actors in this production take great delight in playing Williams and as a result they are delightful to watch.

...

Carolyn Demanelis is a wonderful Alma.  She is a different Alma than I have seen before.  She focuses on a stronger, less fragile and less “eccentric” Alma.  It only half works.  While I liked moments of that choice, she forgoes any indication of an emotional fragility which will lead to her nervous breakdown later in the play.  Alma, like Laura in The Glass Menagerie or even Blanche in Streetcar all have a break-ability factor that makes watching them deteriorate very sympathetic and painful to watch.  Ms. Demanelis finds the neurotic characteristics to play but they are the second best choice in terms of watching this delicate flower wilt.  When she emerges from her house after a long hibernation, it is hard to justify her shift in character without seeing the vestiges of that breakdown.

...

All of the younger actors succeed very well playing their age but not as well playing the older, commonplace people of this Mississippi.  Such roles are more difficult as Williams imbues them with the prejudicial, stubborn, gossip filled characteristics that he hates.   With one exception.  Trace Coles is wickedly spot on as young John.  You can see the genesis of all the problems that will plague John in his older years.  He also hits the mark as a very awkwardly dull Roger, a very second rate suitor to Alma.  This is a young actor to watch.

...

The review goes on to praise what appears to be a very nicely executed production of a Williams classic, directed by Richmond theatre great, Bruce Miller.

What stands out in the paragraphs above is that that the only time the play is allowed to stand on its own without comparison is in its summation. Any critical reference to the play is almost exclusively in comparison to Cat, Streetcar, Menagerie, or Eccentricities of a Nightingale — a later play and a permutation of Summer and Smoke. Even as the author launches into his synopsis of Smoke, he prefaces with Eccentricities being a superior play. While comparison absolutely has its place in criticism, there could also be space to judge the play based more on the material itself. 

Fred was a great sport and very gracious to allow me to use this review as an example, and for that I'm very grateful. He understands that Williams is not infallible, and that the play about which he's writing has some dead spots, potentials for pitfalls in production, and a capacity for being languid.  You can read his full review here. He also recognizes the skill of Williams to create rich roles for actors, an ability to wield ambiguity masterfully, and a powerful ability to render emotional expression.

I thank Fred and his fellow critics and reviewers for the commitment to the communities which they serve.

In our next post on this discussion, I will be inventing a review of a production of King Lear in which I compare the entire production to Romeo & Juliet to highlight the incongruity in reviews of Williams when matched against other great playwrights who chose to write in different styles. 

World Premiere Tennessee Williams: How It's Possible

Our next production, Tennessee Williams: Weird Tales is an evening of delightfully bizarre one-act plays by America's Greatest Playwright. Two of these plays, Ivan's Widow and The Strange play have never before been staged. Very regularly we get asked by folks who haven't heard, "What's your next show?", and when we tell them that we're giving two Williams plays a world premiere, we're generally met with astonishment and the question, "How is that even possible?"

The question is asked so frequently that we thought it best to articulate it in a blog post, so the news and the details can reach even more people who are interested in Tennessee Williams' plays.

So much writing!
Tennessee Williams wrote a lot. It's probably safe to say that we have more of Williams' writing than any other significant American playwright. Between plays, short stories, poems, screenplays, and novellas, his body of work is considerable. However, if you count his collected journals, letters, notebooks, essays, and memoirs, there's even more to read about the playwright than you could have guessed (there are also paintings!). Williams wrote daily, prolifically, and compulsively. He left behind about as many clues as to his inner workings and his creative life as a person could. In an age before around-the-clock tweets and twenty-four-hour news, he was setting everything down on paper, providing future generations with a wealth of information about himself and his writing.

How do we have so many of these private clues?
So proud of her "writing son", the playwright's mother Edwina was as obsessive about collecting his work as her son was about producing it. From her collection, the writings found their ways into various archives, libraries, and collections. Draft after draft of famous Williams plays can be compared and contrasted, as he was dedicated to making every syllable count. His notes can be found  scrawled on the edges of typed sketches. They'e still pored over by dedicated scholars, dramaturgs, and lovers of Williams today.

But wait, there's more...
Williams didn't just leave behind previously produced, plays, though. There were also new ones — plays which had not been published or, in some cases, staged during his lifetime. In the three decades since his death at age 71, a number of Williams plays received their first performances, and TWTC is excited to be numbered among the companies given the privilege of staging the master's work for the first time.

En Avant!

Some of the plays premiered posthumously are from early in the author's career. The Strange Play (c. 1939) is an early, experimental work. Other plays such as Ivan's Widow (c.1982) showcase the playwright's mature, later-lifemusings. 

If you'd like to join us to toast our two never-before-seen Williams plays, Tennessee Williams: Weird Tales opens this Friday, April 1st in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

We'll see you at the theatre!

www.twtheatrenola.com

Photo Credits: (above) Alexandra Kennon in Ivan's Widow and Emily Russell in The Strange Play, photographed by James Kelley.