American Drama:

1
American Drama The Glass Menagerie by
Tennessee Williams

• English III
• US Literature

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Drama

• A drama, or play, is a narrative meant to be
  performed.
• A play is a written script brought to life by
  actors, producers and directors.
• A script for a drama contains traditional
  narrative elements like plot, setting,
  characters, dialogue and theme.
• The script also contains stage directions, which
  inform the actors how to move, how to react, and
  when and where to enter and exit. Stage
  directions may even include how to interpret a
  characters motives. Directors and other
  behind-the-scenes producers of drama refer to
  them for information on sound effects, lighting,
  props and costumes, etc.

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Reading Drama

• When you watch a drama, or play, you hear the
  dialogue and see the staging.
• However, when you read a drama, you must envision
  the action and staging. Therefore, you must read
  the stage directions.

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Basic Drama Vocabulary

• Drama a serious play
• Comedy humorous play
• Protagonist the principal character around whom
  the action of the play revolves
• Antagonist the person or force working against
  the protagonist in the play
• Monologue a story, speech or scene performed by
  one actor
• Cast group of actors in a play
• Downstage acting area closest to the audience
• Upstage acting area furthest from the audience
• Objective a characters goal or intention
  (motive)

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Memory Play

• Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie is a
  memory play.
• The memory play is a non-linear structural
  pattern in modern American drama. Post-World War
  II, many playwrights began to tap into the power
  of memory as a narrative device. The action is
  conveyed by an involved narrator recalling the
  incident(s).

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Tennessee Williams

• Born Thomas Lainer Williams in Columbus,
  Mississippi in 1911
• Lived with his grandparents, sister (Rose) and
  mother while his father travelled for a telephone
  company
• Father took a job and moved the family to St.
  Louis, away from the grandparents

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Tennessee Williams Biography

• The change was very traumatic, especially for
  Rose, who began to slip into a make-believe
  world.
• In 1937, Williams parents were convinced to
  allow doctors to perform an operation on Roses
  brain to correct her erratic behavior. After the
  surgery, she was forever a childlike woman.

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Tennessee Williams Biography

• Williams began writing in high school.
• He won his first prize at sixteen years old for
  an essay entitled Can a Good Wife Be a Good
  Sport?
• He went to the University of Missouri as a
  journalism major, though his passion was writing
  poetry.
• Because his grades were poor, his father pulled
  him out of school and sent him to work at a shoe
  company.

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Tennessee Williams The Writer

• Williams was miserable at the shoe company, quit
  and went to stay with his grandparents, now
  living in Tennessee.
• It was during this four months of recuperation,
  that Tom changed his name to Tennessee and
  decided to become a writer.

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Tennessee Williams

• He began to travel with a friend around the
  country and ended up in California and then New
  Orleans.
• He entered a playwriting contest, won and moved
  to New York. Shortly thereafter, he began writing
  screenplays for MGM Studios, though he despised
  it.
• He submitted a screenplay called The Gentleman
  Caller. It was rejected by MGM, yet became one
  of the most beloved American plays, The Glass
  Menagerie.

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Tennessee Williams Super Star

• Williams disliked the fame and attention. He
  fled to Mexico and continued to write.
• In Mexico, he wrote his next most famous American
  Drama, A Streetcar Named Desire which won him
  the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Drama Critics
  Circle Award.

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I hope I have been able to contribute an
understanding about people Tennessee Williams

• Williams continued to turn out plays for the next
  thirty years.
• In later years, he had various health problems,
  including difficulties with alcohol and
  addiction.
• On the night of February 24, 1983, he choked on a
  plastic bottle cap and died, alone, at the Hotel
  Elysee in New York City.

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The Glass Menagerie Summary

• The Wingfield's live in a small tenement
  apartment. Amanda, the mother, heads the
  household, after her husband abandoned the
  family. Now, Tom, the son, financially supports
  the family by working in a shoe factory. He longs
  to leave his unsatisfying job and join the
  Merchant Marines. Laura, a shy daughter and
  sister, retreats from friends and school into her
  own fantasy world. Determined to find a husband
  for her daughter and guarantee the familys
  future, Amanda urges Tom to find a nice young man
  to introduce to his sister.

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The Glass Menagerie Setting

• Set between World War I and World War II in St.
  Louis, Missouri.
• After World War I came the Roaring Twenties, a
  decade of unrestrained behavior on the part of
  both people and government, which brought about
  the stock market crash of 1929 and sent the
  nation into The Great Depression.
• Formerly well-to-do families found themselves
  poor, and the poor seemed to get even poorer.
• The story of the Wingfield family is a close-up
  look at how people dealt in various ways with
  their impoverished circumstances.

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The Glass Menagerie Structure

• Two Acts
• Seven Scenes
• Non-linear does not follow a logical straight
  line of development moves in and out of
  sequenced time

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The Glass Menagerie Characters

• AMANDA WINGFIELD
• Mother of Tom and Laura
• Her husband deserted her years ago leaving her to
  raise her children alone.
• She escapes the realities of the real world by
  living partially in the world of her youth and
  gentleman callers.

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The Glass Menagerie Characters

• TOM WINGFIELD
• narrator
• Amandas son and Lauras brother
• Supports the family by working in a shoe
  warehouse
• He feels suffocated by his home and work and that
  his creative abilities are being destroyed by his
  circumstances.

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The Glass Menagerie Characters

• Amandas daughter and Toms sister
• Slightly physically disabled one leg is
  slightly shorter than the other
• Laura has retreated from reality and surrounds
  herself with old phonograph records and her glass
  menagerie (little glass animals)

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The Glass Menagerie Characters

• JIM OCONNOR
• The gentleman caller
• Nice, ordinary, young man
• Works with Tom at the shoe warehouse
• Hes the only person in the play who is able to
  exist successfully in the real (normal) world

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The Glass Menagerie Symbols
Unicorn
Movies
Fire Escape
Blue Roses
Candlelight
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The Glass Menagerie Symbols
Fathers Photograph
Glass Menagerie
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The Glass Menagerie Themes

• Reality vs. Memory
• Tradition vs. Progression
• Conformity vs. Individualism
• Family Loyalty
• One must follow ones dreams no matter what

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Now lets read

• Reading Schedule
• Day 1 Act I, sc. 1 2
• Day 2 Act I, sc. 3 4
• Day 3 Act II, sc. 5 6
• Day 4 Act II, sc. 7