Drama and Theatre studies - The glass Menagerie - By T. Williams.

Authors Avatar

Year 12 assignment –Drama and Theatre studies.

The glass Menagerie – By T. Williams.

The glass menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams in the mid 1940’s and is what many consider to be his best ever work. Like many of his plays, The Glass Menagerie is set in the south of Northern America and consists of five characters. The play is said to mirror Tennessee’s life very closely as he was brought up with an overbearing mother, a disabled sister and devoid of a father figure in his life. The play shows the “Tom” character’s struggle for independence and freedom from his current existence. The entire play is centred on two of the five characters, even though one of these characters, the gentleman caller, only arrives in the final scenes, and the father, who is illusive throughout the entire play but is mentioned and referred to throughout.

         For the performance piece, I played the character of Amanda, Tom’s imperious mother. The scene that we performed was directly after a scene where Tom and Amanda had had a furious argument with Amanda and Tom both saying how they truly felt about how the other one treats and acts towards them. Our scene starts with lots of stage directions that truly build up the tension between Tom and Amanda that grows and grows with the silence and the physical distance between them, and is only broken by Tom breaking this strain of characters by saying the first sorry. There is very strong sub- text to the scene that is shown more in the stage directions then in the text. The sub- text being that Amanda was truly hurt by the things that Tom had said to her and is genuinely terrified that she will once again be left another loved one, but this does not mean that she is scarred because she will miss her son solely as a mother, but because the more manipulative, self centred side of her will miss him as the provider and the bread-winner. This sub- text is apparent when she turns the conversation from Tom’s love of the movies to how he should completely forget about his own aspirations and dreams and concentrate more on his job, “most young men find adventure in their careers.” which is paying for the house which he coincidently he shares with his mother and sister. The main plot in the scene is not set and changes from Tom apologising to his mother, to her trying to talk to him about Laura, to them both ultimately arguing about what they where arguing about in the previous scene.

Join now!

I played the character of Amanda to demonstrate the plot and the sub-text by using the dialogue and the stage directions that are given and exaggerated them slightly as the play is that of memory and is not a realistic play. I used facial expressions to display the way I felt about the way the conversation was going and to show the way that my character was feeling, such as the look of embarrassment when she asks Tom, “promise me son that you will never be a drunkard.” I think that while asking Tom this Amanda has an uncomfortable look ...

This is a preview of the whole essay