Imagine that you have been asked to direct “A Streetcar named Desire” by Tennessee Williams. How would you present the play?

Zulfqar Ali 11JH 20th September, 2001 "A Streetcar named Desire": Tennessee Williams Imagine that you have been asked to direct a version of the play. You have selected your cast and they have come to their first rehearsal with you. Explain to the actors who are to play the parts of Stanley and Stella Kowalski just how you would like them to perform their roles in the play. Stanley and Stella Kowalski are both working class people, living in a small, ground floor flat in New Orleans. This is a poor, multicultural society, with many pubs, bars and bowling alleys. Stanley is the child of immigrants and is proud of what he is. He works in a factory and appears to be a hard worker. Stanley is a strong, muscular character as described in the stage directions by Williams; "He is of medium height, about five feet eight or nine and strongly compactly built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and attitudes." He is proud to be who he is and everything that he owns. As described in the stage directions he loves, "good drink and food and games, his car, his radio." Stanley is a very powerful, dominating character. He is deeply in love with his wife Stella, but has a serious problem with controlling his temper and becomes very violent. In the beginning of the play Stanley is very welcoming and friendly to his sister-in-law that he's never met before. This

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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The pressure of reality can impinge too much at times. Everyone has some means of escape. Consider those escape avenues used by the characters in The Glass Menagerie. Why are they important and what reality is each character running from?

Yr 11 English Lit. Long Essay Emma Bright The Glass Menagerie The pressure of reality can impinge too much at times. Everyone has some means of escape. Consider those escape avenues used by the characters in The Glass Menagerie. Why are they important and what reality is each character running from? The characters in The Glass Menagerie are all attempting to escape the reality that is their depressing and non-existent lives. The lower-middle class Wingfield family is living in the American city of Saint Louis, where each of them is faced by the unwanted actuality of their existence. As a result, Amanda and her children Tom and Laura, each in their own way endeavour to break free from the anguish and confinement that they are faced with. Although each character is running from a different aspect of their live, they are all trying to escape from the same thing; the harsh reality of their existence. The character of Tom Wingfield is faced with the pressures and responsibilities of supporting Amanda and Laura after his father, Mr Wingfield left. Tom is left having to work making cardboard boxes in a shoebox factory and having to deal with a nagging, overbearing mother and a terribly shy, crippled sister with an inferiority complex. Amanda, although simply wanting the best for her children, is driven so forcefully by this that she cannot let Laura and Tom live the life that

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"The out come of events in the Glass Menagerie dramatizes the tragedy of indulging in the kinds of behavior and thinking that negate the possibilities of living fully and honestly in the present."

"The out come of events in the Glass Menagerie dramatizes the tragedy of indulging in the kinds of behavior and thinking that negate the possibilities of living fully and honestly in the present." -Joseph K. Davis, " Landscapes of the Dislocated Mind in Williams' 'The Glass Menagerie'," in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute Though Tom narrates The Glass Menagerie and his sister Laura is symbolically the actual glass menagerie, the play belongs to neither of them. The play belongs to their mother, Amanda, as substantiated by the above quote from Joseph K. Davis. Amanda indulges herself in memories of the past and refuses to accept the present. The play is also hers because it is her "tragedy". It is about how she behaves after her husband leaves her and her reaction when her son shows signs of doing the same. She also controls the two conflicts of the play, as well as the glass menagerie represents her fragile world of illusions and memories of the past. Amanda's control over the two conflicts of the play exists in the fact that she creates them. She supplies the conflict between herself and Tom as well as provides the conflict of having Laura marry. In the case of Tom she constantly nags him and questions where is he Is going and then openly states her doubts of his truthfulness. Her nagging starts in the beginning of the play in her conversation with Tom, in which she tells

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Main Themes in The Glass Menagerie

Main Themes in The Glass Menagerie Tenesse Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is a play presenting a story of the Wingfield family and their struggles. Set in St. Louis during the Great Depression, the play revolves around Amanda and her adult children, Tom and Laura, struggling to make ends meet in a St. Louis apartment. Numerous themes are incorporated in this play, and amongst the more prominent themes are those of individuals trapped by circumstances and struggling between illusions and reality, impossibility of true escape, and loneliness of humans. These themes are clearly portrayed through the characters of the play, each lonely, struggling to survive, to escape reality through illusions. Perhaps the most dominant theme in "The Glass Menagerie" is that of human failure, the frustration of individuals trapped by circumstances. All the characters in the play are palpably doomed from the very start, unable to ever have a truly happy life in this harsh world. They all struggle to survive in a world that gives them no reason to exist, and though their attempts will allow them to survive for a time, they will never truly triumph. Hence Amanda Wingfield clings to her Southern background, a past of servants, jonquils, and gentlemen callers, and in the meantime puts hope into the future of her children, of a steady job for Tom and a husband to support Laura. In this attempt to

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Gone In Thirty Seconds.

Gone In Thirty Seconds. One minute she was standing there, laughing, smiling, chatting, being her usual happy self. Then in thirty seconds it was over. There was the sound of screeching brakes, a cry of pain that words could not describe, a sickening thud. And then silence. A long mournful silence. Thirty seconds and it was all over. Laura was a bright, bubbly, happy 16 year old, maybe one of the happiest around. She had everything going for her. She did well at school, had the looks every girl wished for, a wide circle of friends and a boyfriend that thought the world of her. In thirty seconds she lost all of it. It was a couple of days after the GCSE results had come out. The holiday so far had been great, the weather had been constantly hot and sunny and Laura was living her life to the full. She was still taking in the feeling of freedom after the strain of the exams. It was as if a giant weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Laura, of course, had got straight As in her exams so it was time to celebrate her success and a new start at a new school for A levels. A big evening out had been arranged. Everyone met at Laura's house and danced around the room singing to Britney Spears whilst getting dressed up to hit the town. As the girls arrived the room filled with the chatter of exam results and the summer holiday. There was a strong feeling of relief in the air as

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Laura Ashley Holdings plc - company overview

Laura Ashley Global organisation Laura Ashley Holdings plc has suffered differing fortunes since it was founded in the 1950s by Bernard and Laura Ashley. It has been involved in the designing, manufacturing, distribution and selling of garments, accessories, perfume, gift items, fabric, wallcoverings, bedding, lighting, and furniture. Famed for its floral prints, the chain was highly successful during the early and mid 1980s but things changed in the early 1990s when various management and structural problems as well as those relating to growth, distribution, and various external influences such as global recession surfaced Laura Ashley herself died in 1985. There is a notable difference in the organisation up to and after this year. Up to 1985, it was a simply structured, steadily expanding organisation operating in a non-complex environment (complexity arises when there are numerous complicated environmental influences [Johnson and Scholes, 1989]). In the months and years after, many changes took place. Laura Ashley went public in flotation, acquired other companies involved in areas such as knitwear and perfume, made heavier investments in manufacturing and information technology (IT), moved towards segmentation with Mother and Child shops, exclusively home furnishing shops and unit shops (franchise operations). The organisation moved gradually away from vertical

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How far is it possible to feel sympathy for Laura and not Hedda?

Jasmine Seippel, IB06, English A1 Standard world literature essay How far is it possible to feel sympathy for Laura and not Hedda? Throughout both plays of "Hedda Gabler" and "The Father" one may feel that Laura and Hedda are both evil, manipulative characters, however in certain ways one may also sense that one character is seen to be more sinful than the other character. "The Father" is a play about relationships, between a married couple, between men and women and between father and daughter. The play is about a man who is manipulated by his own wife into convincing himself that he is mad and ends up being driven out of his own home by the suspicion that his daughter is not his own. "Hedda Gabler" is also a story about the relationship between married couples and lovers. Hedda is a bright and ambitious middle-aged woman. Hedda opts for a conventional marriage without any love involved. She marries with the idea that she will find complete fulfilment in her husband's career and finds out too late that this is unlikely to happen. "The Father" is regarded by some as a naturalistic play as it shows the audience how life truly is at some stages of life. The play also has allotted naturalistic features such as science and medicine, which are mentioned frequently throughout the play. This helps the audience to sympathise with the characters, in particular

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The Glass Menagerie is described by its author as "a memory play" Discuss this view up to the arrival of the gentleman caller.

The Glass Menagerie is described by its author as "a memory play." Discuss this view up to the arrival of the gentleman caller. At the very beginning of The Glass Menagerie, the audience is immediately introduced to Tom as the narrator and how it is a memory play. Yes, I have tricks in my pocket; I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. What is very unique about The Glass Menagerie is that the narrator (Tom) is also a character in the play and the playwright's voice. This emphasizes the fact that it is a memory play, because it is these very events that are memories and recollections of Williams. In his production notes, he talks of using stage to arrive at a "penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are" or things that he remembers of his past. Unlike a lot of traditional playwrights, Tennessee Williams is extremely specific in his stage directions, especially at the very beginning of the play. The scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits and details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart. The interior is therefore rather dim and poetic. What is very peculiar about his stage

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

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

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'A Streetcar Named Desire' Plot Synopsis

'A Streetcar Named Desire' Plot Synopsis When the play starts, we see Blanche DuBois arriving at Elysian Fields, Mississippi, looking for her younger sister Stella. She is shocked to find that Stella who is married to Stanley Kowalski, a polish man, is living in such a small apartment, in a rough part of town. Blanche goes into the apartment and waits. She is feeling a little tense so helps herself to an alcoholic drink. When Stella arrives both females are overly excited to see one another, however Blanche cannot hide that she is more than disappointed in Stella's choice of living. Blanche soon informs her younger sister about the loss of their family home Belle Reve. She explains to Stella that she had lots of debts to pay off, due to the deaths of several family members. Stanley soon arrives home accompanied by two other men; Steve Hubbel, who lives upstairs with wife, Eunice, and Harold Mitchell, a.k.a. Mitch, who lives with his ill mother. At first Blanche and Stanley appear to get on fine, yet she is shocked by his lack of refinement. We also learn that Blanche had once been married. The following day when Blanche is bathing, Stella informs Stanley of the loss of Belle Reve. She doesn't appear overly concerned, however Stanley feels that Blanche may be conning Stella out of her share of the profits. He searches through Blanches belongings and finds things that look

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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