Download by Tennessee Williams

Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
1
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
provide you with an insight into our productions and take you on a journey
through the creative process.
and the creative team, giving you unique access to the production.
directors by offering a range of opportunities to help them develop their craft.
These packs are produced by the Taking Part Department at the Young Vic.
Taking Part is committed to offering our community in Lambeth and Southwark
a wealth of opportunities to be involved in the big world inside the Young Vic. We
produce work with local schools, young people and adults, which run alongside
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From the plays we produce, to the way that we produce them and all of the other
interest everyone.
If you live or study in Lambeth or Southwark and would like to find out more
about our work or get involved please visit www.youngvic.org/takingpart
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If you have any questions about these packs or our work please contact
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We hope you enjoy learning about our production from the inside.
The Taking Part Team
Written by: Susanna Gould
Edited by: Georgia Dale
With thanks to Natasha Nixon
Photos by Johan Persson, unless otherwise stated
First performed at the Young Vic on 23 July 2014
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: The Director, Benedict Andrews (page 5)
Part 2: The Play and the Playwright (page 9)
Synopsis of A Streetcar Named Desire
The Different Levels of Streetcar
Literal
Symbolic/ Mythological
Allegorical
The Playwright: Tennessee Williams
The Language and Poetry of Tennessee Williams
Part3: From Page to Stage (page 20)
Collecting Images
Concept/Design
Berlin production
Part 4: In the Rehearsal Room (page 33)
Realising the Vision
Work on Scenes:
Scene 2
Transition and Scene 3
Scene 11
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team (page 41)
Benedict Andrews talks to Natasha Nixon
Interview with Magda Willi, Designer
Interview with Ben Foster, Stanley
Interview with Frankie Finney, Deputy Stage Manager
In the press
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Hello,
Welcome to Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
chance to write about one of my favourite plays and to observe the process of
turning it into an extraordinary production.
I love Tennessee Williams for his incredible ability to write so beautifully about
human experience, create atmosphere and capture emotions. Streetcar is such a
clever, complex play - it somehow encompasses a massive historical and social shift,
a poetic sensibility of som
finely nuanced characterisation, is completely and utterly human. Watching this
production evolve has been particularly special because, like the text, it is incredibly
beautiful. Through taking really bold, unconventional decisions, Benedict Andrews,
the cast and creative team, have created something that totally captures the essence
been in rehearsals throughout and I have loved experiencing how it changes and
enhances perspective, creates images and makes the audience eavesdroppers and
voyeurs.
I am excited by the kind of work Benedict creates because it seems to take what is
felt rather than stated in the text, and make it visible, audible and palpable onstage.
What I have tried to do in this pack is give some sense of the creative process that
lies behind this, the journey from page to stage. I have tried to give a sense of the
text itself, and how this has been used as what Tennessee Williams himself described
Everyone working on the production has been so generous with access to the
rehearsal room, their time, and the insights they
process of researching and writing this pack enormously, and I hope you enjoy
reading it.
Susanna
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 1: The Director, Benedict
Andrews
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 1: The Director, Benedict Andrews
The Young Vic prid
its stages: it is not only about programming great plays, but matching these plays with great
directors who will make them live, make them speak to us about ourselves and our own
time, and possibly make us see them in a new way. For David Lan, the Artistic Director of
now, and if a play is worth doing
is what attracts him to
the work of directors like Benedict Andrews.
Benedict is the multi-award-winning Australian-born director, of both theatre and opera,
the fact that he has worked extensively both internationally, and in his homeland, creating a
body of work that encompasses both classic and new texts. He has regularly collaborated
with Cate Blanchett at The Sydney Theatre Company, where productions include the highlyacclaimed The War of the Roses
Gross und Klein
The Maids.
It is telling that Benedict has worked extensively with Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in
Berlin: like Ivo van Hove, who directed t
A View From
the Bridge
The text is central, but is also metamorphosed into a theatrical language of image and sound
in time and space.
The War of the Roses, Sydney Theatre Company / Sydney Festival, January 2009
(Top row, left and centre) Part One Richard III; (Top row, right; Bottom row, left and centre) Part Two Henry
IV and V; (Bottom row, right) Part Three Henry IV and V
Photography Tania Kelley & Benedict Andrews (www.benedictandrews.com)
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Aesthetic
tions which evoke the
1
Images from The War of the Roses [see page
6] show a stage filled with gold confetti, playing against the empty space of later scenes, all
the glitter swept away; a ring of men with bags on their heads; a stage strewn with flowers;
The Seagull
shows Masha standing in black sequins behind an ink-black veil. In another image, from
Measure For Measure, Isabella
Three Sisters, was
similarly visually constructed: a classic text borne of the Naturalist movement2, and often
staging was instead, in the words of the theatre critic Michael Billington3
Beckett4
Whilst the bare stage and mound of earth is obviously not the literal setting of the play, or
mbolic level, the
emptiness and bleakness that resonates throughout the text of Three Sisters.
(Top row, left) The Seagull, Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, June 2011, Photography Heidrun Löhr
(Top row, right) Measure for Measure, Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney, June 2010, Photography Heidrun Löhr
(Bottom row) Three Sisters, Young Vic, London, September 2012, Photography Simon Annand
1
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue42/5722
2
th
th
A movement in European drama and theatre of the late 19 and early 20 century which attempted to create
the illusion of reality
3
See http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/sep/14/three-sisters-review
4
The Modernist playwright Samuel Beckett, 1906-1989, known for his bleak, existential explorations of the
human condition, such as Waiting For Godot
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Staying True to the Text
s take on theatre and directing.
Some would argue that this treatment is too radical and not what Chekhov intended; that if
and a table being set for lunch, this is what should be on the stage. However, it could be
said that such a literal rendering of the text does less to illuminate its feelings and ideas, the
heart of the text, than something more abstract might. It could be argued that the stage
directions are actually clues to the atmosphere and emotional undercurrents of the play
rather than simply the backdrop to the story.
In Streetcar, as we will see, Tennessee Williams uses setting in both a literal and symbolic
way both in terms of the area of New Orleans where Stella and Stanley live, and the space
of the apartment negotiated by Stanley and Blanche and he creates atmosphere through
the use of characters such as the Mexican Woman who appears only to call out her wares,
the Tamale5
various moments throughout the play. This, in turn, potentially forms the basis of a more
poetic type of theatrical production. In an article for RealTime Arts magazine, Benedict
talks of ho
6
in some senses a play text does not exist
until it is given life in the theatre.
play in a book
is hardly more th
destroyed. The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick
interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play,
articulate the magic and poetry of theatre, the intangible, visceral atmosphere that a great
play evokes and which, arguably, cannot be communicated literally. It is not about ignoring
the written text but about finding a new way to make it speak through performance; looking
embedded in the writing, and finding expression for them in a tangible, physical form such
the text. A useful analogy is the difference between poetry and prose
as in poetry ideas
-
His work is marked by the intense and fragile beauty of its imagery and the sense of deep
metaphor lying beneath the narrative surface. In an artform that needs to be both popular
-Neil Armfield, 2005 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award Citation.7
5
A Tamale is a dish, made of dough and containing a filling such as meat, cheese or vegetables, originating from
Central America
6
http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue42/5722
7
See www.benedictandrews.com
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 2: The Play and the Playwright
Tenessee Williams
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 2: The Play and the Playwright
Synopsis of A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire depicts the mental deterioration of Blanche DuBois, who comes
to visit her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans. Blanche
and Stella have had a privileged upbringing on a plantation in the Southern States, but the
and other members of the family. Though Blanche had been married, she had discovered
her husband was homosexual, and, subsequent to this discovery, he had shot himself.
Unmarried, and having lost her inheritance, Blanche is now essentially destitute. She has
left her job as an English teacher, and is in a state of heightened nerves. It is in this state
Stella and Stanley live in a working-class, run-down and boisterous, but vibrant,
portrayed from the outset as moth-like and fragile. She has not seen Stella for ten years,
and is shocked to find her sister living in such poor conditions. This adds to her already
incredibly anxious state, and she drinks surreptitiously to steady her nerves. Her
tension, which grows as Stanley arrives home from bowling, and he and Blanche meet for
the first time: their characters are shown in drastic contrast to each other from the start,
both in terms of social background and class, and their sensibilities and outlook on life.
Tension builds as Stella tells Stanley about the loss of Belle Reve and asks him not to
mention yet that she is pregnant. Stanley does not believe the estate was lost, and suggests
that Blanche is swindling Stella and, in turn, him. Whilst Blanche is in the bath the first
of many she takes in the course of the play to calm her nerves Stanley rifles through her
trunk, looking for papers which might prove his suspicions. Although he does not find any,
the amount of clothing and jewellery Blanche possesses heightens his suspicions. Emerging
from her bath, Blanche sends Stella out and, after a tense exchange, presents Stanley with
the legal documents for Belle Reve. During the course of the conversation, Stanley reveals
that Stella is going to have a baby.
Stella and Blanche go out for the evening, as Stanley and his male friends are having a
poker-night. They return home late, but the game is still going on and the men have been
hen he slaps her on the
thigh in front of his friends. She and Blanche retire to the bedroom, where Blanche
encounters Harold Mitchell (Mitch) emerging from the bathroom. Blanche immediately
and, when he returns later to
use the bathroom again, he stays to talk to her rather than returning to the poker game.
When Blanche switches on the radio that Stanley has already turned off once, Stanley loses
his temper, throws the radio out the window and Stella retaliates furiously. Things spiral
completely out of control as Stanley goes for Stella and has to be restrained by his friends;
and Blanche and Stella flee upstairs. However, after Stanley recovers and pleads for his
wife, Stella comes back down to the apartment leaving Blanche to spend the night with the
upstairs neighbour, Eunice.
throwing around ideas as to how they might do this together, one of which is to contact an
old admirer of hers, Shep Huntleigh. Stella makes it clear she has no intention of leaving
Stanley and there is a heated discussion between the two sisters in which Blanche makes her
feelings about Stanley clear, denouncing him as
-
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Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Stanley starts making enquiries about Blanche, trying to get information on her and her
past. Meanwhile, Blanche has started dating Mitch in the hope that he will marry her and
she will no longer need to depend on Stella and Stanley. One evening, whilst waiting for
Mitch to pick her up, Stanley tells Blanche that he has met someone who says he met
Blanche at a place called The Hotel Flamingo, back in Laurel where Blanche had been
living. Blanche denies this, but the suggestion has clearly disturbed her. She is verging on
hysterical, asks Stella for a drink, and subsequently questions Stella about what she has
heard about her, admitti
that she has been forced into this through her lack of finances. After Stella leaves to join
Stanley on a night out, a young man calls by to collect money for the Evening Star
newspaper. Blanche invites him in, flirts with him and eventually kisses him. The young
man leaves just as Mitch arrives for their date.
Blanche and Mitch arrive home late after their date, and Stella and Stanley are still out. It
has not been a successful evening. Blanche tells Mitch that she had been married very
young, and that she had then discovered her husband with another man. Although they had
all pretended nothing had happened, her husband shot himself shortly afterwards. Blanche
breaks down telling the story to Mitch and he responds by suggesting that they should be
together.
home and tells Stella what he has unearthed about her sister. According to Stanley,
Blanche has a bad reputation back in her home town of Laurel and, rather than leaving her
teaching job, has been sacked for an affair with a seventeen-year-old boy. Stanley tells
Stella that he has brought Blanche a bus ticket and that she has to leave. However, he does
not immediately confront Blanche when she emerges from the bathroom. Stella has invited
has discovered, and Mitch does not turn up. Blanche becomes increasingly distressed, and
when Stanley presents her with the bus ticket to Laurel, she runs to the bathroom to be sick.
Stanley reproaches Stella for how things have changed between them since Blanche arrived,
needing to be taken to hospital.
Whilst Stanley and Stella are at the hospital, Mitch arrives and confronts Blanche with her
take home to his mother. Blanche screams for him to leave and, once he has left, she starts
drinking and dressing up in her various dresses and jewels.
Stanley arrives home from the hospital, where Stella is remaining for the night. He and
s behaviour has become bizarre and
delusional, and the animosity between her and Stanley descends into aggression. Stanley
becomes increasingly threatening and eventually he attacks Blanche and rapes her.
The last scene of the play takes place some weeks
now completely delusional. Although she has told Stella what happened, Stella has chosen
not to believe her. Although she is unsure it is the right thing, Stella has arranged to have
Blanche taken to hospital. Blanche does not realise this and thinks she is going to stay in
the countryside with Shep Huntleigh, the admirer she has tried to contact earlier on in the
play. The doctor and nurse arrive and, although Blanche initially resists, she is persuaded to
go with them. Stella is distraught, but the play ends with her embracing Stanley, and the
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 2: The Play and the Playwright
The Different Levels of Streetcar
and communication. She or he will have a sense of what the play is about,
meaning, and
set about finding a way of communicating this to an audience via the various theatrical
means. When working with text a director will usually have done months of preparation and
research before he or she even gets into the rehearsal room. Much of this is likely to be
work on the text, understanding it in depth. As with any piece of literature, A Streetcar
Named Desire is much more than its storyline. It works on several different levels and there
are themes, ideas and motifs embedded in the characters, their language and actions in
about Streetcar having
levels. So, what
might this mean? The distinctions below are inevitably somewhat simplified, but aim at
being a starting point for considering the text.
Literal
It is, perhaps, useful to start by considering what the difference is between literal and
allegorical, mythological or symbolic. On one level, there is the literal, realistic, concrete
human story of the characters in the play, their actions and emotional responses to events.
heightened by virtue of being in a play, these are universal
emotions that everyone recognises and most, if not all, experience at some point or other.
He is interested in, and sympathetic to, human beings and what makes them tick. In
Streetcar Williams has created completely truthful characters who are beautifully and
humanly complex, and it is possible to see the play as (amongst other things) an exploration
of jealousy and insecurity, loneliness, and the need to survive. As we have seen, Blanche is
de
8
appearance is suggestive of a delicate creature, a moth. Set against this is the tough
brutality of Stanley Kowalski, who has his own needs and sense of self to protect and, as the
play unfolds, a complex psychological struggle between these characters ensues, culminating
partly in this complexity with which he draws his characters. For example, Blanche is not
portrayed completely sympathetically and is shown to be, at times, manipulative, snobby
and, ironically, insensitive. Likewise, there are moments when even Stanley appears, if not
play goes beyond the palpable contrast between them, and creates a web of different
emotions and psychological actions, subtle and nuanced. For example, after Blanche and
in Scene Two about what has happened to Belle Reve,
Stanley, apparently casually, throws into conversation that Stella is pregnant, despite the
fact that Stella has explicitly told him not to do so until Blanche is less anxious.
Benedict talked about the big human questions of the play, including memories and
tory and survival; and desire. Tennessee Williams often writes about
memory, and the auth
hearin
characters, suggesting that there are certain things that
have to be blocked out or denied in order to survive. Stella, for example, says towards the
8
See section on The Playwright: Tennessee Williams, page ?
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Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
with him. Her words suggest that it is not a case of simply disbelieving that Stanley could
do such a thing, but an active choice, which at least presupposes an element of doubt and
Williams also often writes about sex, though in his plays it is often necessary to read
between the lines a bit to discover this. For Benedict, Streetcar
9
ion
that the opposite of desire is death (Scene Nine, page 206)10. Much of what has happened
Vanessa Kirby, who plays Stella, has spoken of how, having believed Stell
-and-love-
11
.
Symbolic/Mythological
Although Streetcar works on this human, psychological level, the characters and their story
are also symbolic, standing for something more abstract and poetic. As we have seen,
Blanche is portrayed from the outset as delicate and fragile. Apart from her moth-like
appearance, she cannot seem to cope with loud noises, and has an express dislike of bright
light. In Scene Three of the play she famously asks Mitch to put a paper lantern she has
Blanche has a concrete reason for not wanting to be seen in the light she is scared of
looking old and believes her looks have faded the naked light bulb also stands for a
brashness and reality that she cannot cope with.
Throughout the play she takes hot baths to calm her nerves. Again, although this has a
factual, concrete basis in the idea of being calmed by hot water, it is also suggestive of a
possible to view Blanche as
tender,
Tied in with this is the way Blanche embodies fantasy and
illusion as an escape from reality. The issue of the light bulb also brings this into play,
making reality, for Blanche, synonymous with rudeness and vulgarity. In Scene Nine she
explicitly states her need for fantasy
, and the denial of what
is real, reverberates through the play in, for example, the letter Blanche writes to Shep at
the beginning of Scene Five, and the constant references to this old admirer of hers which
culminate in her delusional phone call to him in Scene Ten, and expectation of his arrival in
little details like her
insistence on referring to Eunice and Steve as Mr and Mrs Hubbel, in Scene Six, and in
asking Mitch to bow to her when he arrives at the end of Scene Five.
In direct contrast to Blanche we have Stanley, who can be seen as symbolic of what
animalistic terms, and his abrupt idiom is drastical
poeticism. On meeting Blanche he immediately removes his sweat-soaked shirt something
which she would have considered impolite - jokes about Stella falling down the toilet and
asks Blanche about her marriage which, we discover, ended tragically (it is unclear whether
Stanley knows this at this point). If Blanche can be said to represent fantasy and illusion,
9
See interview with Benedict Andrews, page 42
All page references are to the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics edition, ed. E. Martin Brown
11
A Streetcar Named Desire : Benedict Andrews Gives Blanche and Stanley a
th
July 2014
10
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Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Stanley Kowalski represents a drive for truth and reality. Again, the complexity of the play
means that neither fantasy nor reality are presented purely as good or bad, though the
tension between the two is clear. This is, perhaps, most explicit in Scene Ten, , in which each
character tries to impose their own version of events on the other.
The tension in the play between Stanley and Blanche becomes a clash between two different
ways of looking at the world. In this particular situation, each threatens the other because,
slipping away and of which Stella is the only other potential survivor. In this context,
view on her in
one of the most violent ways possible.
The symbolism of the play extends to a number of details within the text. For example, the
-ending cycle, or inability to
escape. A number of mythological references in the play contribute to its symbolic aspect.
For example, Elysian Fields, the name of the area where Stanley and Stella live in New
Orleans, is a term from Greek mythology which refers to the final resting place of heroic and
victorious souls, those who had died in battle.
Allegorical
America post- World War II
understanding it is to see it as a specific
type of symbolism - using characters or
events to symbolise ideas. Although, as we
have seen, Streetcar works on a human,
psychological level, arguably the story and
characters
of
Streetcar
are
also
representative of wider issues, with Stanley
and Blanche being particularly symbolic.
Crudely put, Stanley can be seen as
representative of the machismo evident in
American society after WWII, with Blanche
being representative of an older set of
values that were being swept aside at that
time.
It is no coincidence that Williams has made
Stanley working class and, not only a
decorated war hero, but a soldier of the
125). In the picture Stella shows to
Blanche before Stanley arrives home, he is
wearing his medals and, although Stella
as
Streetcar was first published in 1947, not
long after the end of World War II, and in
many ways Stanley and Blanche can be
seen as representative of tensions which
arose in the aftermath of this conflict.
America had helped crush Nazi Germany.
Many Americans had lost their lives, but
those that returned home were hailed as
war heroes and, as a result, many saw the
middle and lower classes as symbolic of
the true American spirit of heroism.
Equally, this became synonymous with the
values of family and home, as many of
those who returned were ready to settle
down with wives, children and steady jobs.
Although women did serve in the military
during the war, this was a predominantly
male area and, therefore, representative of
a strong masculinity. Following the defeat
of Germany, a strong sense of this
masculinity, bravado and victory, pervaded
America.
the kind of pride and patriotism felt at the
contrast, are of a privileged, moneyed upper class. They have grown up on a plantation12 in
12
A plantation is a farm or estate where crops are grown on a large scale, to be sold commercially. The
plantation owner would normally live on the plantation in a large mansion. Cotton, tobacco and sugar cane were
common crops in the southern states of America
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the South, which puts them into the bracket of wealthy, landed aristocracy. The upper class
from which both Stella and Blanche come was particularly unpopular following the war: the
Great Depression of the 1930s had affected millions, bringing unemployment, high interest
rates and debt, and many saw this upper class as blind to the struggles of ordinary working
and middle class people. This opinion of the upper class served to further underline the
h
A whole mythology surrounded the way of life common to the wealthy Southern states where
Blanche and Stella grew up, alongside or perhaps because of complicated codes of
social conduct in society and culture. Men and women prided themselves on good breeding
and good manners. Men were expected to be chivalrous and women were expected to
cultivate an air of mystique and charm which was reverenced by the men.
A
The Glass Menagerie,
continually references this way of life, constantly regretting its demise. This demise is,
again, relevant to Streetcar. After the war, and following the Depression, a new era of
economic prosperity was ushered in, fuelled by an increased consumption of goods and an
increased productivity to meet this. This, in turn, resulted in a wide-spread industrialisation
which had no time for the dreamy Southern ideals of chivalry and inheritance. Having been
largely rural, and dependent on agriculture, the South became more industrialised and
urbanised after 1945, and attracted national and international migrants. The difference in
social class between Stanley and Blanche is an expl
Conversely, Blanche is disturbed by what she sees as a lack of
as an allegory of the destruction of an older way of life by modern forces; and of a
privileged elite by the emergent hard-working masses. Early on in the process Benedict
hment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate by the savage and brutal force of
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Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
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Part 2: The Play and the Playwright
The Playwright: Tennessee Williams
f delicacy and
poeticism. His plays and short stories are peopled with characters with fragile souls and
minds that are often lost in memory and story/fantasy rather than fully aware of the present
or reality. Tennessee Williams is often drawn to the misfit, and has a particular sensibility
for what makes people vulnerable. Referring to his whole body of work (not just Streetcar),
. A Streetcar Named Desire
characters can be traced throughout his work. For example, there is Laura in The Glass
Menagerie, a girl who spends all her time with a collection of glass animals, afraid to go out
in the world; and her mother Amanda, who, stuck in a dreary St Louis apartment, like
Blanche, dreams of her past in the South and insists on using Southern terminology in her
day-to-day life; there is the delusional heroine of The Lady of Larkspur Lotion, one of many
Sweet Bird of Youth. Desire is a theme often explored, often with a sense that it is a
potentially dangerous force for example, in Suddenly Last Summer Catherine recounts
how her cousin was killed and eaten by a group of men for expressing his homosexuality;
and in Orpheus Descending, the character Val causes commotion in a conservative Southern
town when he starts a passionate affair with one of the women who lives there. Williams
explored this theme further in his short stories, many of which are surprisingly explicit
bearing in mind how subtly these ideas are expressed in his play texts.
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, in
Dakin, and sister,
Rose. Rose was mentally fragile. Later in life she was hospitalised and, in 1943, was
lobotomised. Her delicate state of mind had a profound effect on Williams, who was
extremely close to her growing up. The
family moved to St Louis (where The
Glass Menagerie is set), and Williams and
Rose found it very difficult to adjust to
city life. Life for this family was complex
Tennessee Williams in front of Broadway theatre where
A Streetcar Named Desire opened.
childhood was troubled. He was unwell
with diptheria as a child and spent a lot of
time at home, overprotected by his
mother, whilst his father travelled with
his job. When his father was at home he
often chastised Williams for what he saw
as girlish behaviour. The relationship
between Cornelius and his wife was also
difficult and gradually deteriorated. In an
attempt to escape these difficult
relationships, Williams spent a large part
of his life on the road, attending three
universities and travelling all over
America and Mexico. He never stayed
anywhere long. Eventually, aged 28,
Williams left home for New Orleans,
which is where he changed his name from
Tom to Tennessee. He kept an apartment
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there, in the French Quarter (where A Streetcar Named Desire is set), right up until his
death in 1983, suggesting his close personal identification with the city. It is, perhaps,
telling that Williams cites this move to New Orleans as the moment for identifying with his
as a way of sexual l
not decriminalised in the Southern States of America until 2003 which, perhaps, gives us
some sense of the repression Williams might have experienced.
ship with his family was central to his life and work, and clearly
had a profound impact on his concept of sex and desire, a theme which, as we have seen,
runs through much of his work. He was greatly affected by how his sister changed as she
got older, recalling his sense of betrayal when she began to be interested in boys other than
him. However, he also believed that his mother had Rose hospitalised in order to prevent
her being raped or seduced and bringing shame on the family. The Glass Menagerie, which
with his mother and sister in particular. It was this play which brought Williams recognition
and acclaim, and it was closely followed by A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. Tennessee
suggesting that, though not strictly and precisely autobiographical, he certainly created art
plays deal frequently with outsiders,
misfits on the edge of society who are little understood by those around them. The language
he uses is lyrical, and his plays are often prefaced with epigraphs taken from poems, such as
A
Streetcar Named Desire. His vision is of a tough world where the fragile individual is pitted
against society.
Thomas Lanier Williams III (right), who would later adopt the name Tennessee
Williams, with his mother Edwina and his sister Rose.
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Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 2: The Play and the Playwright
The Language and Poetry of Tennessee Williams
In all his plays, Tennessee Williams uses rich, dreamily poetic language to evoke his
characters and the worlds they inhabit. The lengthy, opening stage directions of A Streetcar
Named Desire, whilst depicting the ramshackle environment of Elysian Fields in New
Orleans with concrete facts
-storey corner building on a street in
soon merges into
poetry in its description of a s
There is a sensuality to the way Williams writes and, in these opening moments, he refers
not only
e stage
directions are very typical of Williams and set the scene in a very particular way. Their
detail and sense of metaphor suggests an atmosphere as well as a physical environment.
Similarly, at the beginning of Scene Three, which opens amidst the me
emotional undercurrents of the scene alongside the actual dialogue. An atmosphere is, of
course, intangible
-storey corner
translated onstage.
It is not only stage directions, however, that play a role in this sense of atmosphere, but also
l
ains its own poetry.
This sense of atmosphere is palpable throughout A Streetcar Named Desire
other plays). Sound plays a particularly important role in the text to evoke both the life of
the Quarter, where Stanley and Stella live, but als
experience the sound has a symbolic or metaphoric role in the text. Characters that, at
first glance, might seem very incidental, are, in fact, central to this aspect of the play.
There is the tamale vendor whose
for example, a cat scre
in a
the neighourhood, and the fact that Stella and Stanley live near a train track.
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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by Tennessee Williams
Part 2: The Play and the Playwright
Discussion Points and Exercises
Points for Discussion
How does this production of Streetcar set the scene in its opening moments?
What decisions have been made about sound in the production? How does this compare
to what is suggested in the text? Are all the suggested sound effects used? If not, why
Exercise
Look at the openings of a selection of plays by different playwrights and compare how
they set the scene. Where stage directions are used, compare how these are written.
Choose two of the plays you have looked at and decide how you as a director would set
these opening scenes (before any of the characters speak) in your own production of
each. You may want to consider set, lighting, and sound. Where possible, try to set up a
space using these ideas.
Make a collection of images that evoke for you the atmosphere of the opening of
Streetcar.
In groups, each person should choose a sound from the play this could be a line spoken
by a character like the Vendor (see above), or a non-verbal sound such as music. Create
a soundscape using these sounds. Perform these to the rest of the class (try keeping
your eyes shut, both as performers and audience as this will help you to focus purely on
the sound). What effect do the sounds have? What kind of atmosphere is evoked?
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 3: From Page to Stage
(Left to right) Gillian Anderson, Vanessa Kirby and Benedict Andrews in rehearsal
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 3: From Page to Stage
Collecting Images
Rehearsal room photograph by Johan Persson
For each of his productions Benedict compiles images that evoke for him the atmosphere
and ideas of the play, and relate to his vision of the production, its look and feel. This is
really interesting given that he has such a strong visual aesthetic to his work, but also
because the images evoke something beyond words and therefore seem to be a suitable
starting point for finding expression for those things in the text which are palpable but
unspoken, such as the different levels in Streetcar. It is not a question of trying to replicate
the images on stage, but using them to inspire the world of the play as imagined by the
13
director. These images go into a
. They also form the basis of the exchange
central to the creative process - with the production designer, who also collects images.
Magda Willi, the designer for Streetcar, who has worked with Benedict on a number of
a big collection which is our Streetcar
our Streetcar world, and by working through
14
. This suggests that the look and feel of the production
are at the forefront throughout, as well as its more literal, psychological aspects.
What is striking about the images for this production is that they seem to be immediately
evocative of A Streetcar Named Desire, yet it is hard to put into words exactly what it is
that makes it so. Although there are some images with more literal links to the play, such
as one of a streetcar, and one of a vast white plantation mansion, most of the images link to
the play in a more atmospheric or symbolic way. There are lots of images of interiors, and
of women and men. One page shows an image of a small house in the dark, its shape barely
distinguishable, but with an orange light glowing through the closed curtains of one large
window. On another page, there is an image of an empty interior of a house, the curtains
closed, with daylight just sneaking in. Elsewhere, a woman sits at a window, by a bare
mattress in a darkened room, her head turned away from the camera. There is a delicate,
13
14
Further examples of these can be found on www.benedictandrews.com
See Interview with Magda Willi, page 52
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
sheer curtain which is almost completely closed but sunlight filters through the gap she is
looking through. Beneath her, in a different image, a woman sits at a kitchen table, eating
or preparing food, looking boldly at the camera. The kitchen is simple and modest, with
splashes of colour provided by basic objects in it rather than any kind of décor. There are
images of gyms with weights and heavy training equipment; a whole page of images from
poker games which look to be a riot of colour and noise; a car suspended starkly in a
factory; children playing amongst apartment blocks and houses amidst wonky telegraph
poles and concrete. These are set against more delicate images a woman in a tiny, flimsy
an
emerald colour dress, elegantly poised on high heels and carrying a red handbag, with
nothing around her but darkness; a child pulling back a heavy theatre curtain.
d in
colour and stuck up in the rehearsal room. This suggests that as well as forming a basis for
the design, the actors, director and creative team can also refer to them throughout the
rehearsal process even if they are not explicitly discussed. Perhaps this non-verbal element
is just as important in the creative process as discussion.
Exercises
Choose a play and gather and compile images that, for you, relate to what you have read
in some way. There is no right or wrong. Try to be instinctive about this rather than
over-analysing your choices at this stage.
Collect images for your own production of A Streetcar Named Desire and create a
workbook.
Look at the image of the woman with the red bag on page 24? Create a character using
this image as a starting point. Who is she? Where is she? Where is she going? What
does she want?
Points for Discussion
Look at the images on the following pages. How do they relate to the different levels of
A Streetcar Named Desire
opinion?
sort of world is suggested by these images?
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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by Tennessee Williams
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
24
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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by Tennessee Williams
Part 3: From Page to Stage
Concept/Design
The exchange of images between Benedict and Magda gradually evolves over time into
decisions about design and staging. Obviously, it is essential that this process is completely
collaborative as the set will determine the space used by the actors, and the physical and
spatial relationships possible therein, as well as informing the overall look of the piece. In
terms of design, there will be a number of drawings and models before the final set is
constructed and put in place.
White card model. Photo
Magda Willi
In this production of A Streetcar Named Desire Benedict and Magda have taken the radical
decision to stage the play on a revolve which turns throughout the production, offering
different viewpoints on the action as it unfolds. The set encompasses the whole of Stella and
walls have dissolved, allowing us to peep in, as well as see right through the apartment all at
a fridge, kitchen sink, table and chairs,
separated by a thin gauzy curtain from the bedroom with bed and dresser which, in turn,
leads into the bathroom, complete with bath and wash basin
though this is not fully
realised in the sense of being photographically real. This allows everything to be present at
once so that, for example, when Blanche is shut in the bathroom, rather than being offstage, her presence is still felt and actually seen, even if she is behind a shower curtain.
Equally, when a character approaches the apartment from the street, we are able to see
their approach at the same time as watching the scene within the apartment. When you are
sitting with the narrower edge of the revolve in front of you, the stage takes on an
extraordinary depth, unusual in theatre, and when there are actors in different places on the
set all at once, the image is really layered. There is something ghostly and unfinished about
the place. Benedict r
15
.
This interplay in the set between the tangible and intangible, the visible and invisible, seems
to link back to the different levels in the play and hints at its more metaphorical aspect. For
duping of the audience tha
more suggestive again brings to mind a sense of the poetic and this, in turn, helps bring into
play
15
See interview with Benedict Andrews, page 42
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
al
not human,
16
.
The audience are seated in-the-round17, which is something that was very important for
Magda and Benedict. This was an active choice as the space does not have to be configured
like this the stage space
is not in a set position, as it is in many other large theatres, and the seating can be moved
around, allowing directors and designers to factor this into their concept.
The revolve allows for space on the perimeters of its circle for characters to come and go as
if from the street, or other parts of the Quarter. This appears to make the layering of
images possible and bring to life the atmosphere of the Quarter, with even the more minor
-turning
spiral. There is something very voyeuristic about the relationship between the audience and
seen from the outside and people by windows. Sometimes it feels, for example, like you are
see, or overhearing an argument you are not supposed to hear. The revolve is also very
cinematic as it controls and changes your perspective in much the way a camera does in a
film. Again, this is a bold decision as, with most conventional staging in the theatre, the
being fixed. Conversely, the revolve, perhaps, allows for an even more naturalistic style of
acting as the actors do not have to think so much about positioning and sight-lines but can
use the space more fluidly.
White card model. Photo
16
17
Magda Willi
See interview with Magda Willi, page 52
On all sides of the stage, with the stage in the centre (though not necessarily in a circular shape)
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
White card model. Photos
Magda Willi
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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by Tennessee Williams
Part 3: From Page to Stage
Berlin Production
In some ways this production of Streetcar has had an even longer evolution than most
productions because, in fact, Benedict and Magda collaborated on a production of the play
in 2009 at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin. The production in Berlin was very
different to the one at The Young Vic, and looking at these differences further highlights the
thinking behind this most recent production.
Endstation Sehnsucht (A Streetcar Named Desire), Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, April 2009
Photography Tania Kelley & Magda Willi
The production of Streetcar in Berlin had, in itself, a complex creative journey behind it.
a pool of water in front of it. And Blanche would go off into that pool of water at various
18
. However, it was back then, in Berlin, that the idea of a less
completely realistic set was born though at this stage, the production went to the other
lieve in the complete realism of the
initial concept, and they started taking the set apart. The set that they eventually used was
a collection of dressing table mirrors and some other items that happened to be
stored at the side of the space they were using. This complete stripping down of the set
meant that the actress playing Blanche actually entered by the actual door to the theatre at
so that when
19
. The production was minimalist, with little set and
18
19
See interview with Benedict Andrews, page 42
See interview with Benedict Andrews, page 42
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
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20
. Although this idea was
exciting and bold, Benedict felt that something was lost by getting rid of all of the
disappears. This human element is so finely nuanced in the writing, expressed through the
everyday detail of people living together for example, Stanley not being able to get into
the bathroom when he needs to because Blanche is taking a bath and is, arguably, difficult
to communicate on a completely bare stage. Benedict describes the impact of what he felt
and it was this sense of the everyday that he wanted to bring to this production of Streetcar
at The Young Vic. However, the abstract element of the Berlin production was still
resonant. So the creative process for this production started with Magda and Benedict
looking at two possible approaches on the one hand the abstract approach, and on the
other, a more Naturalistic approach. This continued for a while, with the idea of choosing
one app
Tellingly, one of the key characteristics that has translated from the Berlin production to
this production is the idea of a revolve. Although the stage in the Berlin production was
almost completely bare, there was a revolve. This was different from that used in the
current production as, instead of being three dimensional and sculptural, there was simply
an inset in the floor which turned. Something about the change of perspective made possible
by this was important and exciting to both director and designer.
Another aspect of the production in Berlin was that the play was cut and ran at just under
21
Woman chatting, and Stanley arriving home and shouting to Stella. In the Young Vic
production, these aspects have been restored and the text remains uncut.
20
21
See interview with Magda Willi, page 52
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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Part 3: From Page to Stage
Discussion Points and Exercises
Points for discussion
A Streetcar Named Desire?
What evidence can you see of that in the text and/or in the production? Why do you
think Benedict Andrews wanted to add these back into this production?
Why do you think the revolve was so important to the director and designer in their
productions of Streetcar? What do you think it adds to the production and why is this
important?
Exercises
Look at the images of the production at Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin and
compare them to the images of the production at The Young Vic. What are the
similarities and differences? What do you think seem to be the advantages and
disadvantages of each approach?
Take a scene from the play and try staging it, first with minimal props and set, then with
more fully realized props and set. How do the two versions differ in terms of effect for
the audience?
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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Part 4: In the Rehearsal Room
Gillian Anderson and Benedict Andrews in rehearsal
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 4: In the Rehearsal Room
Realising the Vision
vision for a play obviously happens
in the rehearsal room with the
actors. Every director has a different
approach to this part of the process
and the way the rehearsal process
works is obviously determined to a
particular vision for the play. In a
play with characters, at least part of
the focus is likely to be on the
psychological, the actions and
motivations of the characters what
they do and why they do it and what
they are doing with the words they
speak
and how this is expressed
through use of voice, physicality and
the use of space.
Vanessa Kirby and Benedict Andrews in rehearsal
one which works almost
poetically to express the play so it is interesting to see how he works in rehearsal, how this
aesthetic is realised, how it is integrated with the human, psychological aspect of the text,
and how this text is felt and spoken/expressed by the actors. The rehearsal process for
Streetcar demonstrates how its aesthetic is rooted in the text, and how it arises from the
seems integral to this, particularly because in this play there is so much about space and the
idea of territory Stella and Stanley live in a small apartment and, though Stanley is the
least because of her belongings spilling all over the place and the encroachment of her
world-view through the introduction of things like the paper lampshade and the smell of her
perfume, and her constant confinement to the bathroom.
Gillian Anderson in rehearsal
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The set itself is in Streetcar rehearsals from Day
One. Although rehearsals do not take place in
the theatre itself or even at the Young Vic to
begin with the set has been constructed in the
rehearsal room (often when rehearsing a play,
there will simply be a mark-up of the set on the
floor rather than a replica of the set, or the set
itself). From the very beginning this allows for
the emotional/psychological subtext of the play
to be expressed vividly and beautifully not
only through the words, but also through the
movement of the actors in time and space.
seemingly natural gesture
opening a door,
opening a cupboard, pouring a drink, lighting a
kitchen, all the things about how people live and
how they live close to each other become the
notes in which the drama is played out, but they
want to feel like a very instinctive lived-in
subliminal ever-forward moving choreography in
which all these massive drives are then
co
Clare Burt in rehearsal
director are constantly on their feet, testing out
the possible journeys through the apartment
space and its immediate surrounds, and much of the process is about painstakingly picking
apart the text moment by moment and, having interrogated its emotional undercurrent,
working out how it occurs in space. Benedict often talks about the choreography of the
moment and, though it is arrived at more naturally than dance steps that are taught, there is
definitely a choreographic quality to the work, particularly around exits and entrances and
transitions.
Often, seemingly tiny moments will be repeated again and again to refine a moment or a
particular image. Coupled with the effect of the revolve itself, images start to occur
naturally, which change dependent on where you are sitting and the position of the revolve:
for example, Stanley, viewed from afar stalking in his pyjamas behind a white curtain just
before he rapes Blanche, whilst her hysteria plays out almost
from the bedroom, through the curtain to the front door, seen in its entirety with the revolve
side-on; the lurid remnants of Bl
and furniture which in themselves speak volumes
heel shoes on t
the bright green toy frog sitting on the
floor as Blanche is taken away by the doctors, or
things and somehow jump out at you more than they might in a more conventional stage
space.
Another distinctive element of the rehearsal room is the emphasis on sound. Benedict often
d of Scene Two into the
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Vanessa Kirby in rehearsal
their feet, Benedict and the actors discovered a
doorframe as he comes from the bathroom into the bedroom and through to the living area,
Five, Blanche is writing a letter (which she reads aloud) to Shep Huntleigh, the contents of
much wealthier than they are). In rehearsals, Benedict worked with the actors on finding
and Eunice that is happening upstairs (in the text this argument is indicated after Blanche
read
this way, the argument, and the seemingly small actions of Stanley and Stella getting ready
to go out, become almost poetic because they are symbolic as well as incidental to their
characters. At times it feels as if a musical score is being played out in which both the text
and movement are notes alongside the sound.
As we have seen, the text works on different
levels and how this comes into play in the
rehearsal room is interesting in itself. For
example, for an actor, whilst an abstract idea
interesting and helpful to explore, it is difficult
a pragmatic sense the play asks this you
kind of have to forget the mythic sense. You
these complex layers to the play, they are
rooted in the concrete world of human beings
therefore, in working on the play you are still
working on untangling the myriad of words and
actions that human beings say and do to each
other. Again, this is part of the genius of
Streetcar
the abstract ideas are so well
embodied within realistic characters that it is
entirely possible to approach the play in this
way.
Gillian Anderson in rehearsal
In approaching realistic characters, again,
different directors have different methodologies. This can range from a highly systematic
approach which verges almost on the scientific working round a table to break down the
to a much more organic approach.
36
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
In rehearsals for
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Streetcar every scene is broken down in detail, and this is always active, taking place in the
space created by the set. There is lots of discussion of lines and moves. The process is
incredibly organic, with questions about character and character history, for example,
arising as part of the interrogation of the scene rather than being explored through
character exercises. This makes it all feel incredibly natural, and the actors are very
instinctive
nowing its corners and
negotiating its parameters at every turn. Benedict talks about the fact that in rehearsals,
on between each other and then actually
find almost the most simple or the most logical patterns. Organic patterns for each of the
22
.
Ben Foster in rehearsal
22
See interview with Benedict Andrews, page 42
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 4: In the Rehearsal Room
Work on Scenes
Scene Two (Week 2 of rehearsals)
In this scene Stella tells Stanley that they have lost Belle Reve and Stanley, furious, and
suspicious of Blanche, starts to go through her things whilst she is soaking in the bath.
When she gets out of the bath, Blanche sends Stella out to get her a drink, and she and
Stanley have a heated discussion about the legal papers about Belle Reve, which Blanche
something Stella has expressly asked him not to divulge yet.
Using the revolve demands a combination of pragmatism and creativity, and Benedict
worked with Vanessa Kirby (playing Stella) and Gillian Anderson (playing Blanche) to
create the moment Blanche meets Stella coming back from the store with her drink. This is
experimented with a number of times, and, as the moment evolves it seems to become both
more truthful and fluid for the two actresses, and a more refined visual image of them
embracing in the street. Despite the choreographic element to the work happening at this
text. Benedict talks about the fa
gives up something, very subtly betraying Stanley because he has betrayed her by
mentioning her pregnancy to Blanche; and the idea of the sisterly bonding which happens
here for the first time, which they take back into the end of the poker night in the next
language at
to dash expresses what is too painful for Blanche to articulate
husband, Alan
husband was and I
of the
what happened to her
Ben Foster and Gillian Anderson
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
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Scene Three and Transition From Scene Two to Scene Three (Week 2 of rehearsals)
Scene Three takes place later the same night as Scene Two. Blanche and Stella arrive home
to find the poker night still in full-swing.
Benedict worked with the actors on a transition that suggests the time-lapse between the
two scenes, as well as showing the emotional and atmospheric shift that occurs. This is
layered gradually, bit by bit. There was some discussion of the fact that, though the
characters are in a real psychological realm in this moment - on a basic level, Stella and
objective is for the transition to somehow find and show a relationship between Stella and
Blanche leaving to go out for the evening, the men arriving to play cards, the time-lapse that
takes them deeper into the game and the night, and Stella and Blanche arriving home.
ct talks about being available to achieve seems to be something
more theatrical and stylised than the simple act of arriving and leaving, and results in the
As we
have seen (above) the score that evolves includes Ben Foster (Stanley) thumping the
doorframe as he comes out of the bathroom and Branwell Donaghey (Steve) and Troy
Glasgow (Pablo) entering to set up the game, cracking cans open.
This sense of musicality extends into the scene, where the actors are asked to create a
general hum of conversation suited to the poker game, and the actual lines of text
have to fight through. The scene is
sketched out first, then fleshed out with more detail, evolving with each repetition. When
Blanche and Stella enter, Benedict asks Vanessa and Gillian to try this with Blanche
There was discussion of the relationship between the sisters at this stage. It is now Stella
Branwell Donaghey, Ben Foster, Vanessa Kirby and Troy Glasgow
Scene 11 (Week 5 of
rehearsals)
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This scene takes place severa
state has completely deteriorated. Stella has arranged for her to be hospitalised, but this
has been disguised as plans for Blanche to go on holiday. She, in turn, has confused this in
her mind with meeting up with Shep Huntleigh, an old admirer23. Stella and Eunice help
Blanche prepare to leave whilst Stanley plays poker with his friends including Mitch in
the next room. The scene ends with Blanche leaving with the doctor and nurse.
Bene
Stella and Stanley have amassed
away with Shep
hospitalisation is
arrives, and the moments leading up to this being like the cast backstage before a
as if you are
they have to be aware of what is going on with Blanche on the other side of the curtain, in
the next room, rather than enclose themselves within their poker game as if they are not
everything, suc
for example,
responding to Eunice when she calls them pigs.
Particular attention is paid to the moment the
doorbell rings, Eunice answers it, and tells
Blanche who is expecting Shep Huntleigh Blanche immediately picks up on the fact that
It is a tiny,
tha
weight and tension of the scene, with the idea
that this might shatter the fantasy they have so
carefully constructed.
Extending the
detailed conduction of what becomes a sort of
musical score of actions, sound and words,
curtain and eventual departure out the front
door an air of a releasing of breath that has
been held in, in anticipation, in the moments
leading up to this.
23
See Synopsis
40
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Ben Foster
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team
Vanessa Kirby
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team
Benedict Andrews talks to Natasha Nixon
How is it being in week three of A Streetcar
Named Desire?
I'm very pleased to be getting towards this final
stretch of the play. Here the tone shifts as it
drops deeper and to have the end in sight of the
rehearsal process therefore kind of mirrors the
structure of the play a little bit. The first bit is
about an arrival and a group of people working
out how to deal with a stranger... sort of getting
to know it in the beginning and the tensions of
that. And the beginning of the rehearsal period
is also working out What is this place? Who are
these people in it? What's going on between
.
earsals is
instead of finding a hundred different ways to do
for the actors to have a very clear
understanding of what's going on between each
other and then actually find almost the most
simple or the most logical patterns. Organic
patterns for each of the scenes within the house.
This special situation with the revolve provides
such an incredible abstraction and a double
movement. On the one hand it pulls you in and
puts you in the position of a voyeur - it
problematizes your watching, it makes you
aware of your watching. It gives you an outsider
perspective but simultaneously pulls you in and makes you want to know more about the
people in there so you have a kind of double movement. So then within it, when you're
assuming the very natural moves - if that's what this sort of naturalism is, the illusion of the
organic -there's a reason for everybody's behaviour and a seemingly natural gesture opening a door, opening a cupboard, pouring a drink, lighting a cigarette, sitting down, lying
on a bed, going in to a bathroom, going in to a kitchen - how people live and how they live
close to each other, become the notes in which the drama is played out. They want to feel
like a very instinctive lived-in, subliminal, ever forward-moving choreography, in which all
these massive drives are then contained. There's something about the big movement of the
revolve that is this massive drive going on while you watch this moth and this ape and these
various things move around in it - a bit likes rats in a maze. It's been very interesting for me
to work from absolute naturalism and no abstraction, and seemingly not an awareness of
being on the stage. Often my work is predicated in the first instance from an awareness of
being on the stage - standing there in front of people.
We know that Blanche DuBois has been played before, we know that Blanche DuBois has
been played independently of us - but she also can't exist without us. She can't exist unless
she comes back inside the body of the actress.
with the great role of King Lear
or the Lady M or the Hamlet. When Lear dies with his daughter in his arms he was just
passing through and we travelled with him to some extreme and extraordinary place. We
feel his passage through our lives, and through the lives of the people in the play, and then
his leaving,
Streetcar. One
interested in is this sense that theatre making is a ritual process, the passage of someone
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from one stage to another. The passing through the Elysian Fields, drinking the waters of
forgetting there, but the passing through of purgatory state to a state of transcendence and
the eviction of a scapegoat from the community as well. So there's a ritual sacrificing of
Blanche within the community. She has to be sacrificed and evicted but she's a kind of
extraordinary creature who passes through their lives.
We've talked a lot about how the play works on two levels: the reality and illusions and the
literal and the mythological. How have you taken care of that in rehearsals?
You kind of have to work in a pragmatic sense - the play asks this - you kind of have to
forget the mythic sense. You can talk about the mythic intellectually while you're working
and you can be aware of the drives but you have to then study the minutiae. You have to
work through it and make sense of all the minutiae to the point where all the minutiae - the
drinking or the seemingly incidental fabric of life - seem incredibly organic and not thought
through.
Part of the pleasure of watching it is that without being television it seems real how people
behave, and this is the kind of study of the minutiae. I guess the minutiae are the weaving of
the fabric of the whole piece, and then when you're assembling that whole tapestry you say
ok now what are the big, big movements through it ? Maybe our revolve also helps with
this., having a sense that there are cogs and gears moving. All of this realism, all of the
minutiae gets to a point that is fundamentally like each scene is a runaway train - the people
who begin the scene are not the same ones who end it. It moves inexorably forward, and has
this stance of drives and compulsions on
the edge. It
The
desire is a kind of wildfire that is a flame
that's lit at the beginning and you're kind
of watching move through the grass lands
and burning the forest and everything
down.
I think what we've discovered through the
realism/not realism of the set is 'skeletal
t think you can get to both
these levels at once in a chocolate box
realism set - on a set that has wallpaper on
the walls and doilies. That's trying to
pretend to the audience... there's a sort of
an agreement with the audience, duping the
audience that this is a complete reality.
approaches that type of realism, I always
a mythic dimension. To me the play takes
place on a borderline, on a seam between
reality and fantasy. On one hand you say
Stanley represents concrete realism,
puritism, what can be touched is real, and
Blanche represents illusion, magic, fantasy.
And both are true - they're not set against
Vanessa Kirby and Gillian Anderson
each other. The mask is just as true as what
is behind it -a
e two sides of
theatre. One part of theatre where you want the real to go all the way on what the
American school of theatre-making becomes, is that things are real
43
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Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
That goes as far as performance artist Chris Burden24 shooting himself in the arm,
or while speaking the text somebody runs for three hours of the performance - you get it a
lot in contemporary dance theatre practices. If you put a woman with a mastectomy on
stage25 that's real, she's not someone who's had makereal. Simultaneously the theatre is also a magic gift of illusion.
pick up a stick and it becomes a sword, or put a paper crown on their head and they're a
king.
Theatre is also a kind of act of make believe and substitution. Both these things are sort of
fighting in theatre - we want the fake to be real and the real to be fake. These two things are
in conflict because theatre is the place that is actually the tear in reality.
where we
go to mimic reality; w
e got
cinema and television which does that much better.
a place where we test reality. We
turn reality inside out and we enter all great plays enter - this seam, this tear of reality. I
think Streetcar literally takes place on
because of these two protagonists, but also
because [Tennessee Williams] wrote
ow the walls of the house
become transparent", which was a really radical new idea at the time, to find a moment
where these borders become confused - inside, outside. Not anymore, but at the time the
only way to make theatre was to dissolve a part of the interior fourth wall of the house to
show interior and outside. The confusion between the inside and outside activates this seem
of realities and I think what we found where we have this sk
re aware of and I think this is the thing that's important to me in all of my theatre
making always - you're watching the thing being produced in front of you, you're aware that
being in front of you, that's it's not already there. There's something about
this that's very liberating in terms of situating our production on the border between these
two places. There's a big invitation to the audience to not see this as a realistic documentary
in New Orleans - either kind of a museological26 recreation of a supposed version of what
the piece was in post-war New Orleans America, which to my mind always ends up in a
fantasy, it's just first train to kitschville, the play becomes twee, the play loses its bite and
the play becomes genteel.
Tennessee Williams is built on nostalgia - nostalgia about loss. It's entirely what The Glass
Menagerie is about and there's a very powerful drug of nostalgia and loss in this piece.
When in a production that nostalgia becomes the first thing and the only thing the 1940s - the piece stops being about what it is actually about, which is sex and a kind of
cataclysmic or cyclonic force of desire that rips lives apart. Every single heartbeat of the
play is predicated upon sexual hunger and it's the bruises and damage and drive caused by
that; the way people hide from it, the way people go after it, the way people destroy each
other because of it. It's not nice, it's not genteel, and wrapped up in a museological
production they only become quaint people from the past who have problems.
Simultaneously though, it's also just completely reductionist to only update it to a sort of
post-Katrina New Orleans, everything 100% realistic or real - it's not that either because you
miss many dimensions of the play that are the particular stampings of Tennessee Williams
the poet. I think that the play is set in is the New Orleans of the mind or the New Orleans of
Tennessee Williams.
Cities are chosen for particular reasons as New Orleans is. The heat of the city, the idea of
this as a hypersexualised city and a city that people are passing through, and a city with
these great names like Desire cemetery, Elysian Fields and the special emotional
temperature of the city. That then becomes transplanted into something else that is then a
metaphor and a place that only exists here. You could go copy from Google Earth Elysian
24
25
26
performance in dance-theatre piece Mata Hari, 10 days after she had a double mastectomy
The science of collecting and arranging objects for museums.
44
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Fields now or Elysian Fields then and it's banal - it's an act of fantasy. To me every play is
it's its own reality and it has its own nervous system and its own ways in and out. And if you
give that nervous system to someone else another director, another actress or another
group of people - they will try and get into what these nervous systems means to them in
another way. Their job is to make it raw and present in their time, and they invent a series of
things for themselves but the play is its own nervous system. It's a big misunderstanding I
think of what we can call
-with-thees the play. To a certain group of people who think there is only one way
to do a play
of the potential of theatre. I think they're scared of what's inside it so they want to sort of
hold it down to something that you can compare to like a museum painting.
Ben Foster and Gillian Anderson
You did a production before of A Streetcar Named Desire27. How will this production
differ?
It was a very, very different production and it was now five years ago. I do believe that in
coming back to some productions that I have made that there would be a very exact
blueprint
hat to another
productions where there's a lot of unfinished
business. Also, even in the short time of five years my perspective on things has changed and
there's still an inquiry to be made into the piece.
Funnily enough the only two plays this has happened to me on have been Three Sisters28 at
the Young Vic - which
done in 2001 in a very different production in Sydney - and this.
When I did Three Sisters I felt I was meeting people who were very dear to me again. Very
very dear,
aybe that they'd died
27
A Streetcar Named Desire was first directed by Benedict Andrews at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in
Berlin
28
Benedict Andrews directed Three Sisters at the Young Vic in 2012
45
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
forgotten: Oh wow I remember you and I know you very very well but there's still more to
know about you . I had the sense with this, but I also have the analogy from a painting that
Magda29 and I and the actors who we worked with five years ago made - a very brutalist
rough sketch. We had a big piece of tarpaulin we were drawing over on a big white wall that was very liberating. This has always been one of my favourite plays - when I did it in
Berlin I was very liberated because I hated the idea in Australia of doing it with people
pretending to be American. I did Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Australian actors - of
course it sounds good with American accents, but we decided to get rid of them and do it
with thick Australian accents just so that there wasn't a layer of mask. So it was very
liberating in Germany with the great actors at the Schaubuhne30 to say ok the only thing
that matters is what's going on between people - we're not pretending to be authentically
American New Orleans, none of that even mattered
And it was a bare stage?
It was a completely bare stage with a curtain in the background and a massive revolve. It
wasn't at first
at the bauprobe31
production as well,
first made a model of a realistic modern apartment set with a pool of water in front of it
and Blanche would go off into that pool of water at various times and flap around it. I just
remember at the bauprobe we gradually started dismantling it - I did not believe in the
complete realism of it,
the technicians working on it, as the last thing you want to think at a bauprobe is that these
people don't know what they want. We threw away everything we had and there were a
series of dressing table mirrors at the side of the stage and some stuff stored at the back and
- we'd just like to use this. When at the beginning of the play the
door opened at the back of the empty stage and Blanche DuBois came in with her suitcase
from the real street outside, - so when it was snowing outside she came in from the street,
she wheeled in with her suitcase, dragged a rack of clothing forward, poured herself a drink,
sat down on a chair - then a big curtain closed behind and it began from there.
So the question was how do you tell this story? We bought on what we needed to but the
minutiae was lost and every gesture becomes the big. It was an interesting production - I
know people who really, really liked it, but I thought we were really missing something. I
even had a strong feeling of what I was missing one day walking along and looking in to
people's rooms and seeing glimpses of their lives: someone's arm as they're ironing or
someone's legs as they walk across the room. These little fragmented glimpses of the
everyday life, the poetry that is in the every day. The living that is done with this massive
force of desire through it, with the living that is done around it.
At the same time [with the previous production] we had invented something that was
essentially a theatre stage - Blanche on a theatre stage and people come and go from her,
the actress having a nervous breakdown on a stage. It was an interesting liberating gesture,
but the play is more complex and interesting than that. Not to diminish last time, because
I m all up for saying I want to look at it just from this angle. I say the play is better than
that and this time I want the more symphonic part of the play beca
before. For instance [in that production] she came in on page 12, or wherever Blanche
arrives, all the prelude was cut and many of the more symphonic aspects of the play were
cut, there was no Mexican woman, and we really reduced it right down. I think it was one
hour fifty no interval32. But the symphonic aspects of it really interest me, and the sense of
the minutiae. We had to find a sense that Blanche is still always trapped on a stage and I
29
30
31
Magda Willi, Designer
Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz is a famous theatre in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin.
A German term used in theatre referring to an early rehearsal with the director, designer and mock-up of the
set
32
The Young Vic production runs at 3 hours 20 minutes, with an interval.
46
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
think that is even clearer in this production where we have these Francis Bacon cubes33
perpetually turning with the props of naturalism on there, b
actress trapped in a room pretending that this is the end of the line and she has nowhere to
go. I think Magda34 and I were also really interested this time in something we
really do last time - last time I opened up into a sort of epic field and this time we were
lived in too close proximity, both people inside the house
and the people of the quarter. But literally every single moment of this production we ask
bed,
the head of her small camp stretcher is this close to
bed and the
membrane of the curtain is between. You feel at each point of production the basic concrete
social circumstances that people live in, without then going into this chocolate box realism.
(Top)
. (Bottom) White Card Model, by Magda Willi
up a lot in rehearsals is this sort of addiction. Like a drug addiction - pimp/whore vibe
ley has as much of an
addiction - I think it is the story of someone who has a destructive addiction. Last time I
thought k, swell,
the revolve came from in the last production - this is the last turning of a circle: the end of
he last turn of the die of this
life of a women going mad; the last turn before she fully clicks to it and they can no longer
33
34
Artist Francis Bacon often confined his painted subjects within linier cubes which isolated the figure
Magda Willi, Designer
47
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
be part of the community; t
this descent; this last turn. This production
the roots, and
roots.
olerate them an
One of the big actions of the play is the stripping away of its central character until their
secrets are revealed, u
d and
transparent,
ranscendence in the final scene. You can say
the play is Stanley destroying Blanche until he obliterates her, a destruction of this woman,
tearing away her illusions;
On the other hand the whole thing is an act
of liberation, and maybe in the passage of Blanche through this circle of the underworld
- maybe the
aybe she lives in pure, pure illusion and a pure purely literary
space at the end - a pure space of poetry. The beauty of the speeches in the final scene about
the dying at sea - i
, and
this act of grace when everyone plays along with her gentleman caller coming. You feel the
people in another world.
Lear35, and also Big and Small36 that I did. In that,
the character Lotta Cotta is also kind of on a pilgrimage - t
Even
though Blanche is stuck in a room - this is the interesting thing about our [Young Vic] set s
o rooms, but she travels on it, s
til another state is achieved on the other side of that,
addiction. Maybe the addiction is when Blanche talks about her past, and when her past is
sex as a form of annihilation, a blind annihilation, and
- like an addiction which is a sort of escape from facing the
. And she
does that with alcohol and she does that with her
relationship with men.
We spoke about the relationship between memories and amnesia, and the trauma of that a
her when Blanche arrives? Ten years have passed
his young woman does age 16 or so, Stella, when she
leaves - to go completely out into the world with no security anymore and to leave her past.
And on one hand it m
you, I want
to forge my own lif
far as possible from her upbringing, where you could say people are essentially joyous and
full of life
but there is really only drinking, gambling,
hom
as having a
ki
nd she lives in a sort of blind heaven. Like someone who is
addicted to opiates or narcotics she lives in this permanent bliss of forgetting, but when that
is taken away or threatened s
35
36
King Lear, Benedict directed an Icelandic translation in Reykjavik in 2010
Big and Small, directed by Benedict at the Barbican, London in 2012
48
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
the background of Belle Reve, the family, and the
mythic context of that. In the play,
, it represents the end of one
American culture, the death of one American culture, and [Stella] comes into a new postwar American culture. I find it very fascinating that these great plays - Miller and Tennessee
sort of pre-empts it as well - these great
muscular American dramas come at the point where the Empire is shifting and America is
becoming the dominant global culture and these plays are forged in the confusion and
conflict and change of that. There are still great contradictions in this society where the
white southern wealth came from the exploitation of a whole slave class of society, and
there was a massive gap between welfare and an underclass. Then what you show is a new
class emerging an immigrant class of which Stanley
olack,
37
-h
s based on the
American dream, a
here [in the UK] I
think, where there still really is a sense
that you feel this kind of class
difference,
vigour and part of the American
muscle,
whatever,
that anyone can become anything. So in
order to do that, he has to believe that
he can pull down that old southern
class, a
that old southern class in this, and what
Belle Reve is, is dead dead dead dead,
and Blanche is the last survivor - these
culture. But a diseased, fly blown, sick
culture. This again is an easy thing to
forget - that this is really part of it. It
was a sick diseased corpse that Blanche
held on to, and it was incestuous and
abusive and all of the sexual
relationships were linked to economics
but also to loss. This addiction that we
talked about that all goes back to this
wound that is the death of one class.
Blanche comes to a place, where the
first thing Tennessee Williams wrote
hite
woman sitting on the steps - a
relationship in the past that had only
Natasha Nixon with Clare Burt in rehearsal
been one of exploitation, is now
seemingly altered (for whatever traits the black woman has, the traits of extreme hunger
herself or sex as a commodity) - immediately Blanche walks into a place that is culturally
her opposite. A new America based on sex, and based on the selling of sex, which is what
America is from the 20th century - a kind of dream factory, and a pornography factory, and
a military factory. And you have all of these components in this ex soldiers, a brothel
down the street - sex is power. Active forgetting, which I think is another American thing, is
a kind of collective public forgetting. A belief in the good life. A belief that with gambling
37
“I am not a Polack. People from Poland are Poles. They are not Polacks. But what I am is one hundred
percent American. I'm born and raised in the greatest country on this earth and I'm proud of it. And don't you
ever call me a Polack
49
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
anyone can win or be lucky. So you have all these seeds of what the American myth is, and
these people as the junkies inside it. The desire junkies inside it.
Has it been weird for you to transition it into a contemporary world?
Not at all. I
it,
the desire junkies and the qualities of America, somebody could choose to exaggerate all of
those things extremely and to put that on the top. Therefore it becomes ironic somehow.
Streetcar in production somewhere in America and i
culture interest is how it comes from underneath, and the
myth - this is the poem of all t
always hard and interesting for me, challenging, is that all my productions to some degree
are an experiment to begin with. You may know from watching me work in the rehearsal
room literally that each day you begin with not knowing what will happen. Sometimes yes,
. The Young Vic is a very special invitation b
space, y
I
telling it what to do and you will be reacting to it and the actors will be reacting to it. One
thing I ended up learning the other day when I was watching the stage revolve, was
something Gillian38 did when she was gripping the edge of the door, just tapping her fingers
on the edge. I
Gillian is clever and she knows people, what is really clear is this is
- we keep talking about Blanche but
too, they are just kind of tooth and nail fighting, but their finger
nails are scraping off the edge of the
her try and do that.
So we want the plays that can still be living. Antigone
different lives and hands and dug up in different ways. You want the play to come back to
life in front of you and to feel like a new play - to feel like it is taking place for the first time
with the urgency and shock and splendour of its first time, and the kind of directness and
truth of its first time. Actually you want it to speak to the present and speak to our present
and our moment as well - you want it to address us directly about being human now, what it
means to have hunger, what it means to be a daughter, what it means to be in a war. But
play echoing back to the moment of its first creation. So
with Three Sisters39
absolutely aware at every moment of it a complete fantasy, p
in Russia now, whatever that is, i
,
these words were written in 1900 we
know what the coming storm they talk about
piece of literature - w
know about the storm that was coming to wreck their lives. And w
to recreate
this picture to still feel the charge of Tennessee Williams writing A Streetcar Named Desire
in in 1945/46. This double movement is absolutely the property of theatre.
I think often this discussion of updating a play is so banal because it misses that it is
literature, and literature echoes. In the same way I can pick up a poem from 1920, and read
it about my life now and
play should do the same thing - not reduce it either way.
38
39
Gillian Anderson, Blanche Du Bois
Young Vic Production, 2012
50
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Corey Johnson
51
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team
Interview with Magda Willi, Designer
Can you talk about your creative process for this production?
On this project we started quite a long while back. Also,
when I work
somewhat different when I work with
worked together before, at the Schaubühne in Berlin - we did
about seven shows there - so already we had a way of
exchanging ideas.
start exchanging ideas, images, compiling things, making a
big collection which is our Streetcar
world and by
working through the images and reconfiguring them, we
this particular production.
And then of course we speak
We di
text, and it was an exciting process and we were happy with the show, so it was a big
decision for us this time - do we want to go further into that direction or do we want to take
another direction?
actually having all the things that are in the text, being able to play the naturalism and
making the poetic terms that Williams uses in the text you know how the items are often
,t
So we started
off with the two directions parallel to each other, thinking both ways, testing the abstract
realms and at the same time working on a naturalistic path, and at some point Benedict said
But working with that
idea in the Young Vic it soon became apparent that it does not work for the Young Vic
space,
just something that becomes very uninteresting, spatially in this theatre I find. I
love this theatre very much
ow
feels very intimate and you never feel far away, and of course
wonderful for a designer
40
, and to really involve the space in
the design - so working on the space we found that playing in the round was the best way of
happening in this play onstage.
And that is quite different from designing for a space where the space is already set, like a
being able to use the space within in the design?
Yes, because, for example, in this production it became very interesting and important to us
that we had this whole complete circle of audience surrounding Blanche on her island and in
The Quarter or the neighbours , and the city and
everybody around it surrounding her. In the play she ends up there because there is nowhere
else she can go, so literally there is no way out. So to us the energy of having the audience
all the way around was very useful and exciting
40
The Young Vic is a fully flexible space, which means the seats can be moved into almost any configuration.
52
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
so about how I was trying to translate the thing spatially.
just when you
actually put an apartment in, and you
just a back wall and a
floor but it should actually have all walls that are there to make it as filmic as possible.
T
of people you want to get in there.
just wonderful having people on three sides or in a
panorama or in a traverse, but to have a small space with wal
good, it feels like a trap. So for a moment there was this moment of despair
make
e had looked at a version of slightly abstracting the
naturalism, but we just wanted either/or for some time - we were trying several things. I
suppose the one thing that stuck with us from the last production in Berlin is the revolve,
which was something we were excited about in the last version. There we had just a black
floor with an inset revolve,
and it was just slowly spinning, and that change of angles or change of perspective is
continuous throughout the scene - that was something that we found exciting to work with. I
suppo
,
onto, and
continuous, and
something to do with losing yourself,
dynamic which feels right for this show. We tried versions when we had a front-on situation
with a revolve, and with a central one - and central, just because of the space, seemed much
more exciting. So we worked out this sculpture which feels right. We chose these steel
beams and this metal which is very, I suppose, traditionally a masculine material and is
something very hard,
not human,
not f
hope, makes the humans in there, or Blanche, even more fragile and more human because
normally is?
-
to them, and I hope
middle of the space,
very exposed, and it turns around itself like a little dancer on a
music box - you really get to see it from all angl
about it. But there is something sculptural about most sets.
Why did Benedict initially want a totally naturalistic set?
I think
something to do with a certain fantasy, and an aesthetic fantasy. I thin
something also exciting about having it all. We once did a show together, Drunk Enough to
Say I Love You by Caryl Churchill, and there we had a complete room, as complete as it
could be. It was behind glass and was like an aquarium; you could look in and watch the
people. Everything was there; we had everything made, even the curtains were printed. It
ended up being a kind of hypergain, which is exciting. I suppose
into just having a n
always looking for that artistic step where you take the reality that you show onto a
different level which is
in the best cases - an interesting kind of artificiality. In the
Benedict is a particularly visual director. Does that change the relationship that the
director has with the designer? Is it closer?
it s
it s closer,
just different. I enjoy it - I think it s great to
have a director who cares so much about things, and you really have an ally in all design
things. We build the aesthetic together, and you always build the world together with the
director, but I suppose with Benedict just a lot of it is through visual input, whereas maybe
with other directors they have other things that move them or are important to them. There
53
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
are pictures that Victoria41 [the costume designer] collected as well, it is not just him and I.
Probably only a very small part of the images are an actual visual reference, but they are
more sort of atmospheric or sometimes even on a meta-level. I think really they are most
important to us as a base to feed from more than for anyone else. Having known Benedict
for some years I just completely understand what he needs as well.
Often people think of the creative process as the rehearsal room, but obviously the creative
even bigger process beforehand. Is that the case?
s really kind of defining the world and setting the starting point,
and then of course a whole other thing happens that we can never foresee when we do the
design, which is one of the things that is so exciting about theatre. It would be awfully
boring if I made a design and then it would stand there and be exactl
great about theatre, because then the actors come and they go in there, in the space,
and they make it theirs and they use it in their very own particular way. T
exciting.
What are the challenges for a designer working with a revolve like the one used in this
production?
Well,
kind of me setting the challenge to everybody else,
Igor [the Production Manager] and the production team to
s a challenge
going to Benedict, although obviously he took the decision together with me, but he has to
work with the actors and be dealing with the fact that they constantly have to be present for
l let down
ever, and also it allows the actors to really focus on each other and get directly at each
other. T
done a run through
It s still possible that after half an hour everyone will just be really
know. But I like having a sense wher
going to be. We are hopeful
and positive, but
possible audience will be annoyed. Some things that we find exciting
they might find just terribly annoying. Obviously we sat in front of the model, turning this
thing around and looking in, and thinking, yeah, this could be cool, but still
so different
smaller in comparison to the object.
41
Victoria Behr, Costume Designer
54
A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team
Interview with Ben Foster, Stanley
Have there been any surprises in terms of what
There are surprises every night, every time you
-hunting machines,
humans, we like our patterns. What Tennessee
built is an extraordinary piece of music, so if we
think of it as a pass or a chemical wash the
photograph becomes clear, it starts to become
sharper and sharper. What struck me the deepest
is how alike Stanley and Blanche are, and he
would be carted away
f
a hard one to grasp, as Tennessee talks about the
of his house. T
rs from different
kingdoms, and
th suffering calling it now, PTSD42; so rather than separating
the two [Stanley and Blanche], I was more
interested in finding the likenesses. Each
performance, each read at home before a
performance, it becomes more apparent that they
are each o
surprise.
which seems a bit simplistic. Do you feel Stanley has any redeeming features?
He has nothing but redeeming features - I think every human being has redeeming features.
There are many essays written about Stanley being an unforgivable man anybody who
said, it depends on where your philosophy, where your humanities live, and my job is to
not to condone those actions, but to find a way into them. I not an uncommon act
unfortunately. In terms of redeeming,
not so black and white - the comic book concept
of a good guy or a bad guy is bullsh*t. Stanley is a man who served his country and a man
who loves his wife more than life itself - his inability to process these wounds of war, and
taking it out on his wife, is unforgivable, but t
ose
-beater,
but if we look at mental illness and if we are considering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as
nd of treatment that he needs. His
, and clearly these traumas and these triggers are being
unfortunately landed on those around him.
I suppose to answer the big qu
to Blanche] Blanche has episodes as well and her triggers spin her out. The way she
expresses those traumas are different, but both Stanley and Blanche are very powerful,
have to
American Greek tragedy,
, and we all
42
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a medical term used to describe symptoms which may occur in a
person after a traumatic experience
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
have many faults. Our realities
so whether or not we want to deal with them, they will define how we evolve.
You mentioned the PTSD. Did that play a big part for you in terms of creating the
character?
That was one of the first conversations that Benedict and I had. Although this production of
Streetcar
it s modernised in the way that it s not stuck in the 40s,
New Orleans - Bene
come back from war in Afghanistan, and
have friends in that world. T
that everyone coming back is suffering the same, but for our purposes that filter of a man
traumatised by war became a key for us for understanding
spine, and rationalising
some of the more violent, the hideous, acts that he performs against these women.
Are there any other challen
in the text, the music is in the text. The
really getting
not just including but celebrating
so easy to forget that when y
well, he does this,
. You can go deeper and deeper and say, well
this man is charming in his own way and does have his own sense of humour and loves his
life he loves his life
perfect.
interpretation of the filters
out of that
his world, in the peak
of his health, and he loses his future when Belle Rêve43 goes away and its tied up with this
stranger in the house, as Bla
I think I unde
, she
meaning his wife
recognition, an animal recognition, of meeting your match.
Gillian has done is empower Blanche. Her performance is a very strong
a glamorous warrior.
Ben Foster
43
The plantation Stanley expects to inherit through Stella.
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
entirety.
Yes
makes her all the mo
ything is always tracking. Fortunately the stage
tracking for the rest of my life
that would be good! Matinees are fun!
In terms of playing the character and working in that kind of space does it make a
difference?
This is my second professional play and my first in-the-round, and my first on a moving
44
place
here [The Young Vic], is just an extraordinary work space. When I came a few months ago
and saw View45 - I was knocked out. So the first introduction into this theatre was View, and
it [the theatre] feels like a boxings a very
theatre has its own requirements energetically, they ask for different things, and we need to
keep our heads bowed and service the space. Each theatre has
privileged to be able to spend time here, for a brief time its fleeting
theatre,
this transient space that we get to share in this group experience.
-the-round and
-wheel,
the language pin-wheels beautifully. I
ng round the way that we
would when the first stories were told in a cave, the stage itself becomes the bonfire and we
all sit around in the dark and watch the lights and the shadows. A
Often when you re
,
Certainly he stages texts in an unexpected way. Does that unconventional sense of what he
does translate to the rehearsal room, and, if so, how does it translate? Does it affect the
rehearsal process in an obvious way or not?
, and interested, and wellcome across. We shared a lot of picture references and music references, essays. We
gather
you put it in the blender and see what comes out. What was so striking about
Benedict in the rehearsal process was that
,
through the
and his ability to hold fragments and see them in the context of a greater whole is
extraordinarily impressive. H
the fragment of a scene the way a musician would feel
that this part of the melody was very important, and keep trying to explore it hook
ture is very important
to him, the dance of that. H
, and he
44
45
David Lan, Artistic Director of the Young Vic
A View From The Bridge by Arthur Miller, directed by Ivo van Hove
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Sometimes in rehears
interesting you should mention
the musicality of the play. Is it very different working in that way? He talks about
choreography as well.
Very much so.
not about nailing it,
about finding it and refining it, and refining it,
and refining it. Watching him direct the others and watching him in the room, he is playing
the words on
- his fingers move in the percussion of the sound and
where it needs to hit in his mind. That may change for the actor, for the scene as it revolves,
but he is playing the piece.
does that fit with this kind of approach?
not how I traditionally work - I don
, but
sa
different animal and the scripts have a tendency to change. The films th
about building,
build of the words you all go out and do field work and bring interviews back and we start
, to make
these people who are something else. There feels like a width to that kind of research, and
with this play
drilling in - we keep going into it.
re different animals
as well - how we go about getting those things is less important than sharing a language and
fortunately we had a very quick rapport. I
trying to serve the thing
- you either do it with love or you
, and love can be difficult and I love Benedict!
You and Magda46 have both talked about the use of images as reference points for creating
the production.
I make workbooks for myself, images and then soundtracks and sketches. We just start
kind of keep your arms open. I similar to
falling in love or falling out of love, where when you turn on a radio and it feels like this
song was supposed to be on because
play or a film or any kind of art project, one becomes more open - and following those grace
points in the universe become the touchstone of your character. It might show up with a
piece of rubbish on the street,
Other than creating your workbook, do you have any personal processes that you use
outside the rehearsal room for creating the character?
I wanted this Stanley to be veryman . What Marlon Brando did, and Elia Kazan
[Broadway director] did with Tennessee, it s sealed. But a great text liv
great text
twenty-two years old! You
o what excited me the most was the thought of making Stanley Everydown Bourbon Street.
of time in New Orleans,
,
,
guy in a polo shirt,
- and that became how do you find
this. The archetype or the godhead of Stanley can only exist if
grounded in a reality that
makes sense to him. I wanted him to be any guy. That, Benedict and I got on book very
quickly about.
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team
46
Magda Willi, the designer.
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Interview with Frankie Finney, Deputy Stage Manager (DSM)
I sit in rehearsal as a point of contact for the director. I take notes of all the
props and make sure they are passed on to my Stage Manager and the props department then either they come into rehearsals, or the designer can choose what she might want.
write
down all of their moves. I write down all the blocking for the show and basically
person who knows the show the best
what entrances and
exits the actors are using. I relay all that information to the Stage Manager [SM] and the
Assistant Stage Manager [ASM] so that when we go into technical47 they know where the
actors are going to enter and exit from, and I do all the setting lists for where each prop
needs to be then they take over in tech. I do almost a second role as we go into technical
rehearsals and running the show where I cue48 the show - so I call all the lighting cues and
sound cues and fly cues and, in this case, revolve cues. I have points in the script that I
know that a technical element needs cuing49 LX
because
quicker to say.
So you have to be very precise?
You have to be very focused, you have to have ears like a bat because often the conversation
will be happening with the director and actor on the other side of the rehearsal room, and
, or an entrance, or a cue point or a costume and you have to
We also create a document called Rehearsal Notes
every day, and I write into that document what props and costumes might be needed nt, so if people are walking around in bare feet the
Production Manager needs to know to do a Risk Assessment of that situation to make sure
we know
ass or anything like that. Every night the Rehearsal
Notes goes out to all departments and the director can also check it is correct. I just a
hopefully nothing gets missed. But you do have to focus all the time.
In Streetcar rehearsals you seem to be up on your feet a lot. Is that different from
rehearsals for other productions?
Yeah, it does depend on the production. Sometimes you can have the ASM in rehearsals to
assist you and they would be the ones doing a bit more of the running around, so that you
can concentrate a bit more on getting the blocking down or getting the sound cues or
whatever. But because of the amount of props that are in the show the ASM, Sophie, was
very busy with the SM, Laura, getting all of the props together. Also because of the amount
of costumes that are used on stage so many live changes happen on stage rather than
backstage it meant all the costumes had to be pre-set on the set, which was an extra layer
rmally have to deal with. Benedict likes to have all of
the props and costumes - at least a very good example of them, if not the actuals - in
rehearsal as soon as possible, which means you are up and about a lot more because you are
constantly having to re-set, re-set, re-set when they go over a scene - whereas a lot of
Benedict
more than a lot of directors are, I think.
47
Technical rehearsals
ss, before the dress rehearsals.
They are used to focus on, and rehearse, all technical aspects of the show, such as sound and lighting.
48
This is to tell the technical operators when to change light, sound, etc.
49
For example, there is a change in the lighting state, or the revolve speed changes.
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Are there any key moments where the use of props and costume are really critical?
Yeah, the suitcase moment50 we had to re-set a lot, where Ben51 pulls the clothes out - they
have very specific lines about what things are so he had to practise that a lot and it means
we have to pack the suitcase really precisely to make sure everything he gets is in the right
order. I take photos technology, iPhones, are genius - so we take a lot of photos of things
are set because then you know
exactly the same when you put it back. The other one
which was quite a fun one to re-set, was the scene after the fight, the next morning52 where
Stella is clearing everything up. Vanessa53 had to really practise to make sure we had the
right time for her to cl
cards, all the beer cans.
So we spent a lot of time messing the set up so she could clear it up, which was sort of the
more fun way round of doing it!
All directors have different ways of blocking. Benedict is very precise, almost
choreographic. Does this make a difference to your role?
easier because you know exactly what the actors are going
change, so although he is precise it will
change a lot throughout the rehearsal period. Even in tech we were changing stuff still, so
you do spend a lot of time rubbing out and re-writing things! Yeah, he does almost
choreograph the show, I think - he does a lot of opera as well and I think that influences his
plays a lot, the way he works.
What are the challenges of working with the revolve?
been a massive challenge actually because we had a limited time in rehearsals so we
this constantly moves so we could never really pin down where it
stairs, so we can work back and forwards from those points, but
been a massive, massive
challenge to get it to work. The speeds were changing as Benedict decided what he wanted
them to look like in previews54
which obviously affects the whole timing of everything. And obviously the actors were
getting more and more familiar with the text, which meant their dialogue sped up, which has
changed where the revolve needs to be as well. So we had to continually adjust the revolve
to make it work, which we
It has been really interesting from a lighting point of view as well for Jon55 - he had to
light the show without ever really knowing where the revolve was going to be, which was a
massive challenge for him. This means there are a few live moving light follows, because we
where the revolve is going to be. It has settled down a little bit
now the show is running - but if somebody drops a line, or they skip, or suddenly they come
in with loads more energy and they do a scene like a minute faster, it makes a huge
difference to where the revolve needs to be
-on effect, not just for that
scene but for the whole act. So, yeah,
been a really big challenge!
You mentioned your ASM and sourcing props. Obviously every director has very specific
ideas about props - can you tell me a bit about sourcing props for this production?
It is very interesting because the creative team work in so many diffe
Stage Management Team
50
51
Ben Foster, Stanley
Scene 4 (the fight happens at the end of Scene 3)
53
Vanessa Kirby, Stella
54
The first public performances, where the company can make changes to a production as they learn how it
works with an audience.
55
Jon Clark, the Lighting Designer
52
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
seen in another country and then try and find it, either here, or see if we can get it shipped
from so
things in
the rehearsal room rehearsal prop!
interesting challenge as well!
The bunting56 was quite tricky because we needed something that could rip every night. They
we found a sample one to put up in
the rehearsals,
I love these c
, and
unfortunately when we then went to buy the bunting all the shops had sold out of that
particular type. I know the ASM spent a long time chasing party shops around this country,
and then their suppliers. It gets torn every night so you need a good two hundred of them but they found it.
T
A lot of it is in the text. But also Benedict really wanted the big Scene Ten57 to be almost as
if
like a wedding night, to have that feel. So he wanted a white cake and Blanche,
obviously, in her big ball gown and
got his silk pyjamas on from his wedding night
- Benedict wanted that kind of simile to be there. But also Blanche
58
, so a lot of it came from the script.
e really was one other than that things are not too eyecatching u
- so all the make-up needed to be nothing that would
draw the eye. Nothing could be too tall because of sight-lines
going into smaller versions of things
distract, because there are a few tricky sightlines sometimes. Magda and Benedict like things to be quite plain - so the bedding and
56
57
58
Where Stanley attacks Blanche
Scene Eight, page 196
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production
Inside: A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Part 5: Meet the Creative Team
In the Press
Benedict Andrews discusses directing A Streetcar Named Desire with the Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/f01dcf00-06b3-11e4-ba32-00144feab7de.html#axzz37k9gRX60
"Sparks are flying... in a good way!" the Independent on Sunday meets Benedict Andrews
during rehearsals
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/a-streetcar-named-desirebenedict-andrews-gives-blanche-and-stanley-a-twist-9615907.html
The Architectural Review speaks to Set Designer Magda Willi
http://www.architectural-review.com/view/a-streetcar-named-desire-interview-with-set-designermagda-willi/8666672.article?blocktitle=Top-Stories&contentID=11974
Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster tell The Telegraph about playing Blanche and Stanley
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/10959606/Gillian-Anderson-and-Ben-Foster-on-AStreetcar-Named-Desire-Were-not-doing-a-full-on-sex-show....html
"What I love about Stella is that she knows herself so well" Vanessa Kirby talks to the Mail
on Sunday
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-2694382/A-sweet-star-named-Vanessa.html
"I was the inspiration for Blanche DuBois" legendary theatre critic Blanche Marvin talks
the Independent on Sunday
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/critic-claims-i-was-theinspiration-for-blanche-dubois-9630885.html
"From Gillian Anderson to Vivien Leigh: Streetcar's Blanche DuBois in pictures" on The
Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2014/jul/16/gillian-anderson-streetcar-named-desireyoung-vic-in-pictures
A hot prospect: Gillian Anderson tells The Sund
DuBois since high school
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/arts/article1429044.ece
If you are reading a paper copy of this pack, you can access an online version via the Young
Vic website which will allow you to click through on the links above.
http://www.youngvic.org/taking-part/schools-colleges/resource-packs
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A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews co-production