More About Tennessee

Our production of Streetcar just closed so of course a week later I receive two theatre magazines in the mail with pieces profiling Tennessee Williams.

This month's issue of American Theater Magazine has some interesting articles on Tennesee Williams. There's a look at some current productions of Streetcar currently in production, as well as a really great look at the many, many writings of Mr. Williams. There's also a general overview and look at some of the early works of Mr. Williams.

This month's Theatre Bay Area magazine also has an interesting piece on Tennessee Williams, but it's not yet up on their website. I guess you'll just have to join TBA to read all about it (or, you know, ask me nicely to borrow the issue).

In other Williams news, it was just announced that James Franco has dropped out of his planned performance on the Broadway revival of Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. This would have been Franco's first appearance on Broadway. Nicole Kidman is signed to play the female lead. The production is being directed by David Cromer (The House of Blue Leaves) and doesn't have a production date as of yet. A shame, I think Williams would have approved of James Franco. Or am I the only person who thinks this?

Streetcar Headed Back to Broadway

A headline caught my eye this morning that I thought was so appropriate. There's a new version of Streetcar headed to New York in 2012. Nicole Ari Parker (Soul Food, Remember the Titans) will play Blanche DuBois and Blair Underwood (L. A. Law) will play Stanley Kowalski. This marks the Broadway debut of both Parker and Underwood. The production is set to be helmed by Emily Mann, and will feature original music by jazz musician (and NOLA resident) Terence Blanchard.

I think it sounds pretty interesting. It's being produced by the same team who did the 2008 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Terrence Howard, and later Sanaa Lathan. I was really bummed that I missed that as it sounded fantastic. Any Dragon fans happen to catch it while it was up?

Production History of Streetcar

A Streetcar Named Desire Production History

The original Broadway production workshopped at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut (see poster to the left) a few weeks before it opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on December 3, 1947.

Produced by Irene Mayer Selznick

Directed by Elia Kazan

The original Broadway cast

• Jessica Tandy as Blanche DuBois
• Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski
• Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski
• Karl Malden as Harold “Mitch” Mitchell
• Rudy Bond as Steve Hubbell
• Nick Dennis as Pablo Gonzales
• Peg Hillias as Eunice Hubbell
• Vito Christi as Young Collector
• Richard Garrick as Strange Man
• Ann Deere as Strange Woman
• Gee Gee James as Negro Woman
• Edna Thomas as Mexican Woman

Selznick originally wanted to cast Margaret Sullavan and John Garfield but settled on Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy, who were virtual unknowns at the time. Brando was given car fare to Tennessee Williams’ home in Provincetown, MA, where he not only gave a sensational reading, but did some house repairs as well. Tandy was cast after Williams saw her performance in a West Coast production of his one-act play Portrait of a Madonna. Tandy won the Tony for Best Actress in a Play in 1948.

Later in the run, Uta Hagen replaced Tandy and Anthony Quinn replaced Brando. It's interesting to note that Hagen's portrayal of Blanche was NOT directed by Kazan - and as a result, this new production refocused the story back on Blanche and pulled it away from Stanley.

I found a great anecdote on IMDb about Brando's performance in Streetcar. I've copied it here for ease of reading:

The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.

For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania.

Interesting. Anyway, the play went on to open on London's West End with the following production staff:

The Original London Production (1949)

Directed by Sir Lawrence Olivier

Featured Vivian Leigh (Blanche), Bonar Colleano (Stanley), and Renee Asherson (Stella)

The smashing success of the play led to the now famous film version in 1951.

Most of the original Broadway team brought the play to the silver screen.

Directed by Elia Kazan

• Vivian Leigh as Blanche DuBois
• Kim Hunter as Stella Kowalski
• Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski
• Karl Malden as Harold “Mitch” Mitchell
• Rudy Bond as Steve Hubbell
• Nick Dennis as Pablo Gonzales
• Peg Hillias as Eunice Hubbell
• Wright King as A Collector
• Richard Garrick as Doctor

A large number of changes had to be made to the script in order to conform to the Hollywood Production Code. The ending is much more ambiguous, and a number of references had to homosexuality and suicide had to be removed from the script. It still ran into problems with various decency groups. The film was nominated for 12 Oscars and won 4 - Best Actress (Vivian Leigh), Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden), Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration Black & White (Richard Day and George Hopkins).

Note that Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando were both nominated but did not win. Kazan lost to George Stevens for A Place in the Sun and Brando lost to Humphrey Bogart for The African Queen.

There have been a few notable revivals since then.

1992 Broadway Revival (at the Barrymore)

Featured Jessica Lange (Blanche), Alec Baldwin (Stanley), Amy Madigan (Stella), Timothy Carhart (Mitch), with James Gandolfini and Aida Turturro in support roles.

1997 50th Anniversary Production - New Orleans

Music by the Marsalis family

2005 Broadway Revival

The 2005 Broadway revival was directed by Edward Hall and produced by The Roundabout Theater Company. It starred John C. Reilly (Stanley), Amy Ryan (Stella), and Natasha Richardson (Blanche). The production would mark Natasha Richardson’s final appearance on Broadway owing to her death in 2009 in a skiing accident.

2011 Dragon Productions in Palo Alto

Directed by: Jeanie K. Smith

Featuring:

Blanche DuBois- Meredith Hagedorn*

Stella Kowalski - Katie Anderson

Stanley Kowalski - Andrew Harkins

Harold "Mitch" Mitchell - Troy Johnson

Steve Hubbell/Doctor/Understudy - Charles McKeithan

Eunice Hubbell/Understudy - Monica Colletti

Pablo/Paperboy/dead husband - Phillip Raupach

Flower Girl/Nurse - Mary Lou Torre

*Member of Actors' Equity Association

Join us as we celebrate this classic on the centennial of one of America's greatest playwrights. We've sold out every show to date, so buy your tickets in advance - the show must close August 21st!

Artist in Residence: Jeffrey Lo

At Dragon, part of our mission is to foster the growth of young, up and coming artists, be they directors, actors, or designers. To support this mission, we sometimes have an "artist in residence." Currently, Jeffrey Lo is serving as the Dragon Artist in Residence. Since he's involved with Streetcar we thought we'd sit down and talk to him about life at Dragon. Here's what he had to say.

Q: So Jeffrey, what does it really mean to be the "artist in residence" at Dragon Productions Theatre?

A: Defining my role as Dragon's Artist in Residence can be a little difficult to do because it involves so much and evolves every day. At it's core, my role is to support any and every Dragon production utilizing my artistic skill set. I am a playwright, director and sound designer so if you track my work at Dragon you'll see that I've shifted from being an assistant director for Turn of the Screw and Streetcar, to sound designing Private Eyes, to finally producing the upcoming New Works Factory in April 2012. The great thing about being the Artist in Residence at Dragon is that while I'm able to use my different skills to support Dragon - I am able to call Dragon an artistic home where I am able to learn, experiment and grow.

Q:Well that leads us to another question - you're Assistant Directing for our current production, A Streetcar Named Desire. What exactly does the assistant director do?

A: The assistant director's role really depends on the director and the show. For Streetcar, Jeanie was the first director who actually gave me a couple of scenes to direct myself. Those two scenes being the scene with Blanche and the newspaper boy and the following scene with Blanche and Mitch right after the date. Jeanie and I met before the days we would block those scenes and she gave me an idea of what her vision for those scenes were and the direction we wanted them to go in. Once the actors came in, Jeanie was wonderful about allowing me to get my feet wet and direct those scenes myself while pulling me aside and giving me pointers and suggestions along the way. It was a really great experience for me.

Q: That's awesome! Do you find one aspect of the theatre more challenging or rewarding that the others? Is there one thing you tend to love the most, or that you aspire to focus on in the future?

A: It'd be hard for me to just pick one because there are different things I love about each area of theater that I work on. I love to work sound because I'm constantly listening to music and get so inspired by how different songs, lyrics or even instruments can affect the way I'm feeling. I have a lot of fun trying to support what the directors and actors are doing on stage and really working the audience through sound. I love directing because I really love the sense of community I work to build within a cast. I really enjoy comparing the group of people I have on the first day of rehearsal and the mini family that I have by closing night. But if someone were to put a gun to my head and told me to pick just one thing to do in theater I wouldn't hesitate to pick playwriting. A part of that answer is cheating because I can heavily influence the sound and direction when writing a script but there's something special about getting down to the core of a show and basically mapping out its blueprint - which is really what a script is.

Q: What other projects have you got coming up?

A: The big thing I'm working on right now is a play that I wrote and directed called

Barcelona Love Song. This project is really special to me because I'm getting another chance to work with Skyler Garcia and Irene Van who I love to death and I worked with 5 years ago on a show called All I Have which is the show where I feel I made my first true artistic breakthrough. The three of us are working on the Barcelona Love Song with a group of 8 students - mostly high schoolers - and I'm just really enjoying the opportunity to reach back to an energetic and youthful period in my career and try and help these students have that same breakthrough I had way back when. For more info on the show, you can check it out at www.06ensemble.blogspot.com.

Anyone else have questions for Jeffrey? Feel free to shout them out in the comments!

Talking Tennessee

One of the great things about my job is the research I get to do on authors and plays. My inner history geek rears her sexy head (history geeks are sexy, right?) and we just go online and spend hours reading. I have been looking forward to digging into Tennessee Williams because he lived in my hometown, St. Louis. A lot of his works are very midwestern feeling, and several plays take place in St. Louis. But it's funny, while I can reel off a ton of random facts about other local celebs, Tennessee Williams doesn't get a lot of press in St. Louis. In fact, this year there was a centennial celebration, but not for Williams. This is the year of the Vincentennial - the celebration of the 100th birthday of Vincent Price. I've not heard a peep about St. Louis' other famous son's 100th birthday. And, in doing the research, I'd guess it might be because Williams wasn't so terribly fond of the city.

Thomas Lanier Williams was born on March 26th, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. If you thought he was a bit younger, and born in 1914, it's because he lied on a form to enter a writing contest.

When Williams was 13 his family moved from small little Columbus to St. Louis, Missouri, and by all accounts, Williams was miserable there. They lived in a crowded, low-rent tenement, Williams was often picked on at school, and he just didn't like big city life much.

His father (Cornelius) was a shoe salesman and worked at a shoe factory in St. Louis; his mother (Edwina) a southern minister's daughter. His father was reported to drink and gamble heavily, and often got into big, violent, fights with Williams' mother.

Williams was close to his older sister, Rose, who was diagnosed as schizophrenic in her late teens. There was an incident in which Rose accused her father of making sexual advances toward her. As a result, Rose was institutionalized and eventually lobotomized, which completely incapacitated her. Williams cared for his sister for most of his life and was often tortured by the thought that maybe one day he might also lose his mind. Williams battled depression, alcoholism, and drug abuse for most of his adult life.

He hopped around universities and eventually graduated from the University of Iowa. Upon graduation he moved to New Orleans and took the name Tennessee. He was often referred to as "Tennessee" by his college frat brothers because of his southern drawl. Tennessee was his father's home state so it could have been a bit of an homage to his roots.

His first successful production was The Glass Menagerie, which opened in Chicago in December of 1944, and moved to New York in March of 1945. Menagerie won Williams the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

A Streetcar Named Desire was Williams' biggest hit. The show opened in New York in 1947, with the then unknown Marlon Brando and Jessica Tandy in the show's starring roles. Williams actually wrote the role of Blanche with Tallulah Bankhead in mind, but Tandy impressed. When Streetcar opened on Broadway, the audience was stunned. There was silence as the curtain descended. And then the house erupted into applause for a full 30 minute ovation. The play's frank look at brutality and sexuality was revolutionary. The play went on to win Williams a Pulitzer Prize and then the team was contracted to create a film version.

For the film, director Elia Kazan went with Vivien Leigh, who played Blanche in the London production under director (and husband) Lawrence Olivier. Leigh got the film role, partly because the studios wanted a "name." Leigh, who was diagnosed as bipolar, wowed Tennessee Williams with her performance (he said that Leigh brought to the role "everything that I intended, and much that I had never dreamed of"), and later Leigh commented that playing Blanche "tipped me over into madness."

Williams had some success after Streetcar, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof came out in 1955, but nothing could come close to the success of Streetcar.

For further readings on Tennessee Williams and A Streetcar Named Desire, I suggest the following:

PBS

Imagi-Nation

Bookrags

Notable Biographies

Our next blog will focus more on Streetcar itself so stay tuned!

Preparing to Ride the Streetcar

We're about ten days from opening our next show, the American classic, A Streetcar Named Desire. Streetcar is widely considered one of THE American plays by one of THE great American playwrights. It has iconic roles that actors would kill to play. This weekend, on Twitter, someone asked Alec Baldwin what his dream theatre role would be and he replied "I played that when I did STREETCAR in 1992."

Want to brush up on your Streetcar? Instead of watching the Elia Kazan film with Vivian Leigh, Kim Hunter, Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, check out "Who Am I This Time?" with Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon. Based on a Kurt Vonnegut short story, it tells the story of a small town hardware clerk who finds himself while treading the boards of his local community theatre. Directed by Jonathan Demme, it was filmed as a part of the American Playhouse TV series.

Here's a sneak peek at our Blanche (Meredith Hagedorn) working her feminine wiles on Mitch (Troy Johnson).

Want another tease? Peninsula Backstage, the local television show covering Bay Area theatre, is working up a piece on our production. They've released a look at some of the rehearsal footage here. This was taken during the designer run through so it's not a real rehearsal - the designer run is for the people on the design side (the costumer, set builder, light and sound folks) to get a feel for the look and atmosphere and progress of the production a few weeks out. Peninsula Backstage will have a whole Streetcar episode coming out with footage and interviews coming out soon so stay tuned!

Opening night is sold out, as is the August 6 performance and the rest of opening weekend is darn near sold out so if you want to catch this show, and it's only running for four weeks, get your tickets as soon as possible either online or by calling the box office (open 27/7) at 1-800-838-3006. See you at the show!

Happy 100th Birthday!

Today we celebrate the 100th birthday of Thomas Lanier Williams - you probably know him as Tennessee Williams though. He was born on this day 100 years ago in Columbus, Mississippi.

A brilliant writer who had a troubled adolescence, many of these earlier experiences informed his works. His father was abusive. His mother was often hysterical and overprotective. His older sister, Rose, was mentally ill, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and when she made claims that her father made sexual advances toward her, was lobotomized.

You can see echoes of Rose in The Glass Menagerie, his breakout play. Set in St. Louis (where the Williams family lived while Tennessee was in high school and college), it tells the tale of the Wingfield family, specifically the attempted set-up of fragile daughter, Laura, by her fading Southern belle mother Amanda. Tennessee has called the play a semi-autobiographical tale of himself, his mother, and his sister. The play was a success and moved to Broadway in 1945 where it won the NYC Critics Circle Award.

Williams then moved on to his second play, and arguably his greatest work - A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee won his second NYC Critics Circle Award and his first Pulitzer. The show was such a success that it, along with most of the cast, were transferred to a film version. It features the now famous and widely acknowledged master performance by Marlon Brando. It's also easy to argue that the fragile Blanche is another echo of his sister Rose and Brando's bullying abusive Stanley is an echo of Williams' father.

With Streetcar, Williams made himself financially secure, and established himself as one of the great American writers. He met and fell in love with Frank Merlo, who he remained with until Frank's early demise from lung cancer in 1961. Williams had battled depression for most of his life and the loss of his partner combined with an addiction to drugs sent him into a downward spiral. Tennessee passed away in 1983 after choking on the lid of an eyedrop bottle. He is buried in St. Louis.

His legacy, however, lives on in his writing. He continues to be one of the most produced playwrights in America and is certainly one of the greatest. Dragon will produce A Streetcar Named Desire this summer in his honor.

Some quotes from Tennessee Williams.

[Image 1 | Image 2 ]

Sources:

Gradesaver.com

How Books Got Their Titles

Wikipedia

PBS