Describe the set, music, costume and lighting in Streetcar and explain the effects that they produce

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Describe the set, music, costume and lighting in Streetcar and explain the effects that they produce

In Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams there are very detailed stage directions incorporating not only appearance of characters but also music, lighting and set to create exactly the atmosphere Tennessee wanted.

        By providing such detail, Williams is able to create the ideal backdrop for the action and heighten the emotions and tribulations of the characters involved.

        The entire play is set in or outside of the Kowalski’s apartment in Elysian Fields. The symbolism of this is that it is also the heaven for Greek Gods the irony is that it doesn’t provide anything heavenly for the people there and it acts as hell for Blanche.

         The building is a 2-story house, which has, be converted in to two separate flats, the building is poor but charming as the decay is masked by the light which is almost of another world.

        ‘The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay’.

        Tennessee uses this to enforce the theme of deception and how nothing is what it may seem to be.

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        Inside the Kowalski’s flat the confinement for Blanche is a feeling that she has no privacy within the house. Williams uses this so blanche cannot escape the truth that she is hiding. The symbolism of then curtain that is used to separate Stella and Stanley from blanche is that Blanche can never escape Stanley and the truth he finds out. Blanche often uses the only room in the house, which is separated with walls to escape from everything; the bathroom also is a place where Blanche can purify herself.

        Within scene ten the set becomes transparent to allow the audience ...

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