Parallel 45 Theatre, 2016
By Tennessee Williams
Featuring: Fiona Carey, Katherine Dillingham Mazer, Jacob H. Knoll*, Ana Luderowski, Kristina Nichols, Brett Nichols, Logan Woodruff, and others.
*Appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association
Set Design: Matt McCarren
Projections/Sound Design: Brittany Powell Merenda
Costume Design: Risa Alecci
Lighting Design: Brian Elston
Assistant Director: Jody Burns
Director’s Note: Tennessee Williams experienced a significant destruction of his family as well as a changing of the times—and you can see it in many of his plays, a deep nostalgia for another time and a desperate, clawing desire to survive in this new, uglier but necessary world. It seems with every play he writes, he is asking how are we meant to, the sensitive ones, live in a world where beauty, heritage and tradition are fading every day.
The heart of this play is, for me, about the necessary death of an era and watching a deeply flawed, extraordinarily adaptable hero attempt to survive in a new, oftentimes hostile environment. Blanche’s muscular fight to survive, to stay sane and to thrive in a world that does not want her is the primary drive of this production. We watch as she fiercely and nobly battles demons that typically go unseen. Whether these figures are memories that won’t let her go, addiction, unhealthy coping mechanisms and/or simply a mental dysfunction that, at the time, could not be treated, the core truth of this production is that Blanche is a hero.
Blanche’s heroism comes from the fact that she doesn’t let her dysfunction conquer her. This woman is a survivor. She is a strong Herculean warrior against the voices in her head. It is not her character flaws that bring her down, but her circumstance, and because of that, we choose to look at her as a beacon of light in our own lives. Blanche teaches us to fight our own demons (whatever they may be) with kindness and determination and to have deep empathy for those who do not have the skills to do so. The play tells us that the job of living, for those of us with the with the resources to do so, is to stay ever-vigilant, let go of the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, break away from unhealthy coping mechanisms and look around us with sharp watchful eyes despite the oftentimes drab landscape looming before us. We must seek out the beauty in the small cracks of this modern world and keep trying day after day despite the difficulty.
