Reading Drama

Drama is a sensual medium: it is meant to be seen and heard. Plays are written, almost always, to be performed, not to be read. Thus, when you read a play, you must take the time to visualize the actions and the characters.

Think about plays and movies you have seen: the acting, the lighting, the sets, the music--all of these things are as important as the words the actors are speaking. A pause or a gesture often tells you more than a line of dialogue. So when you read, for example, A Streetcar Named Desire, it is important to imagine what is happening on the stage: what do the actors look like? What is their body language? When do they pause between words or lines? What are their facial expressions? How is the lighting affecting your perception of the actions? How is the music creating a mood? What is the setting telling you silently about the characters and their actions?

Another element to consider is symbolism. Just as in fiction and poetry, words, items, characters, and actions can be symbolic. In drama, music and light can also contain symbolism, as you will see in Streetcar. However, in drama, symbolism must be visual: it must appear in a concrete action, object, or sound, since few of those who see a play performed will have read it. So every clue as to the writer's intention must be visible or audible.

And, of course, this brings up the issue of theme: just as in fiction and poetry, the playwright is commenting on issues or ideas, using the play as a vehicle. When reading these plays, try to analyze the characters symbolically as well as individually. That is, try to figure out what the characters represent, as well as what motivates them as individuals.

A word about the relationship between movies and plays: some of the plays we are reading have been made into movies. It can't hurt to see the movies; just remember that film and drama are different media: a play is performed on a stage, and therefore the actions and movements of the characters are limited; a character on a stage, for example, cannot be transported to another planet unless the physical stage setting is changed. And plays face financial, practical, and stylistic limitations that movies often do not. Therefore, the audience of a play is asked to use its imagination far more than the audience of a movie. If a play is done well, this can create a great sense of participation and interaction.

For example, the play Steel Magnolias was set entirely in Truby's beauty parlor; there were no other sets. There were also no male cast members: the only actors were the women, and we knew about what the men were doing through the women's conversations. However, in the movie, there were many sets, and many more characters appeared on the screen than in the play. Therefore, although the movie and the play shared many elements, they were entirely different kinds of productions.

Writing About Drama

Writing about plays, as far as content goes, is the same as writing about fiction or poetry: you create a thesis, and then support it with specific examples and quotes from the play. There are a few points to consider regarding style, however.

First, when referring to a play, either italicize or underline the title: A Streetcar Named Desire or A Streetcar Named Desire.

Second, there a a couple of rules to observe when quoting from a play. If you are quoting a single line, and you mention the name of the character who is speaking in the text that introduces that line, it should all be typed as part of the same sentence. For example, "In A Streecar Named Desire, Stanley Kowalski says, 'The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions'" (37). A page number should be cited after each quote, as well.

If you are quoting an exchange of dialogue between two or more characters, you should indent, as you would for a long quote, and use no quotation marks. For example:

STANLEY: The Kowalskis and the DuBois have different notions.
STELLA [angrily]: Indeed they have, thank heavens--I'm going outside! (37)

Third, you should always cite a page number when quoting directly; and since we may not all be using the same edition of the play, you should add a "Work Cited" page at the end of the essay. (Ask if you have questions about how to do that.)

Plot

In a play, there is not usually a narrator to explain what happened or tell us about things we can't see. Instead, most of the information comes to us from the characters' actions and words. The plot (i.e., the events of the play) is helped along, also, by the lighting (which reveals mood or time of day), the props and scenery (moving objects or changing a set can reveal changes in a situation and passage of time), the costumes (a costume change can reveal passage of time, character, and mood), and music (which can set the tone or pave the way, for example, for a flashback).

The plot of a play usually follows a fairly standard structure:

Often, a less important plot is developed along with the main plot; this is called the subplot. It usually shares a common theme with the main plot. In A Streetcar Named Desire, for example, the main conflict is between Blanche and Stanley; but the romance between Blanche and Mitch provides important information about Blanche's motivation, and shares common themes with the main plot.

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee (Thomas Lanier) Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. His mother, Edwina, was a very repressed, genteel, Southern belle, the daughter of an Episcopalian minister. His father, Cornelius, was a travelling salesman for a shoe company. He was often away; when he was at home, he was drunken and violent. As a child, Williams was deeply attached to his mother and his sister, Rose.

Williams' family moved to St. Louis, when he was eight, and he later went to the University of Missouri. He left college after two years and returned home, unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. He took a job in the shoe factory for which his father worked as a salesman, and worked on the assembly line next to a man who became a close friend: Stanley Kowalski.

During this period in his life, Williams became increasingly unhappy. He knew he wanted to write, but felt stymied and trapped in the factory; he felt that he was responsible for protecting his sister and his mother from his father's violence, but wanted to leave home and find a life of his own; and he was more and more aware of his homosexuality, but felt the need to stifle and hide it. Finally, he suffered a nervous breakdown, and went to live temporarily with his grandparents to recover. After his recovery, he returned to college, and graduated from the University of Iowa at age 27.

Meanwhile, Rose, who had always been emotionally fragile, was becoming more and more unbalanced. One night, Cornelius came home drunk, beat his wife into unconsciousness, and then, at the least, made unwanted sexual advances to Rose; he may have actually raped her. We don't know, because there is no clear story of the events. Whatever happened, it left Rose completely unable to function; she became violent, occasionally toward others, but more often to herself. Shortly after, Edwina signed papers for Rose to have a prefrontal lobotomy. (This was a common treatment at the time for uncontrollable mental disorders.) Rose spent most of the rest of her life in sanatoriums.

After graduating from college, Williams moved to New Orleans, where he wrote several plays. He also admitted his homosexuality and became involved with Frank Merlo, with whom he lived with until he died.

Williams' first play to be produced on Broadway was The Glass Menagerie, in 1945. Williams had moved to New York to help prepare the production, and he stayed there until after the production of his next play, A Streetcar Named Desire, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. Then needing a quieter environment, he bought a home in Key West, Florida, and settled there.

Williams wrote consistently, bringing out a play about every two years. His play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won him another Pulitzer Prize in 1955. But he was beginning to have personal and professional problems. He had, by this time, become addicted to painkillers. His plays became more and more experimental, and less and less popular. Eventually, he had a hard time getting them produced at all. (Ironically, many of them are now being revived, and they look very contemporary; some critics say Williams was simply ahead of his time.)

Williams died in 1983, in Key West.

Williams' sister, Rose, inhabits a charcters in every one of his plays; in some, the character is slightly unbalanced or dysfunctional in some way; in others, she is comically disoriented; in still others, the effect is tragic. You will see her in the character of Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire.

A number of themes and techniques appear consistently in Williams' plays: