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

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