A Comparative Study of Modern Theatrical Technicalities in The Glass Menagerie and The Cherry Orchard

The nineteenth Century produced some of the most complex plays that today represent modern theatrical technicalities that differed in several ways from twentieth Century plays. In the twentieth Century, Tennessee Williams was acknowledged for the diversity of genres he covered in his plays, most of which focused on the dark aspects of human experience, which lent significant technicalities to his plays, most notably, The Glass Menagerie. Similarly, Anton Chekhov is a nineteenth Century playwright who developed plays that introduced several theatrical technicalities. He was renowned for portraying realism, a feature that characterised 19th Century theatre. Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is a play considered the landmark of modern theatrical technicalities. This study explores three ways in which Williams and Chekhov made The Glass Menagerie and Cherry Orchard respectively as landmarks of theatrical technicalities, i.e., the multiplicity of genres, effective use of indirect action and irony as theatrical conventions, and the integration and portrayal of nineteenth Century and twentieth Century realism. The research finds that while Williams employs a multiplicity of genres and the use of irony as the ideal theatrical conventions, Chekhov integrates all three elements to create modern theatrical technicalities that not only influence the audience's perception of the characters but also the playwright’s intention. This study is important for both undergraduate and postgraduate readers as it can enrich a reader’s thinking about different theatrical techniques and conventions used in both plays.

Tennessee Williams’s Misunderstood ‘memory play’: Re-Imagining Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams famously called The Glass Menagerie a ‘memory play’. This remark has been consistently overlooked or misinterpreted by critics, unleashing a tradition of approaching the play in a rather confusing fashion concerning who the characters are and how the playwright uses them. This paper engages with the character of Amanda. First of all, I will trace major transformations in the conception of characters throughout twentieth-century drama, providing background for Williams’s attempt to redefine major aspects of a playwright’s craft such as what a ‘character’ is. Secondly, I will survey a critical tradition surrounding Tom Wingfield’s mother and consider major views concerning the character. Recurrent in them, as my analysis indicates, is the failure to acknowledge her as a tool for the ‘memory work’ Tom carries out. The character is subsequently posited as a fluid entity that helps Tom (and Williams) make sense of the past and explore how their families shaped who they were. As opposed to a realistic play, where so much is given at the start, a ‘memory play’, as Williams seems to have conceived it, remains a cry for the reader to join the playwright in a common search for meaning, one that utilizes, rather than just displays, characters in order to reach standpoints that are far from fixed and immutable.

THE EXPRESSIONISTIC TECHNIQUE OF PRESENTING NARRATOR AND MEMORY IN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Expressionism was a movement in art and literature which presented a very subjective view of the world. The movement itself revolted against realism and naturalism, while the technique distorted reality, displayed the human emotions and tried to reveal the psycho-spiritual truth in the Modern world. The Glass Menagerie (1944) tells the story of a broken modern family with three characters- Tom, Laura and Amanda, all of whom live in their own reality. This familys encounter with another worldly character Jim, however, crashed their fragile world around them. In the modern era, when people are often fed extraordinary dreams through different channels, The Glass Menagerie tells the story of sufferings, unfulfilled desires, purposes, ambition, and fear of losing self, familial discord and exposes the reality to them. Tennessee Williams in his play uses expressionism to give his audiences a look into this undetected reality of the world.

Blue Mountain and Blue Roses: An Exploration of the Feminine Psyche in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams, the remarkably outstanding American dramatist of the 1920s, through his plays, presents a marked concern for the identity crisis a woman faces. He projects the crisis arising out of the conflict between a woman’s own aspirations and the traditional role expectations. The Glass Menagerie (1945) depicts the life of two women- Amanda Wingfield and her daughter Laura Wingfield. Amanda is the typical Southern belle that suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune, who withdraws from reality into fantasy. Her daughter Laura, the physically and emotionally crippled heroine of the play is a self-less character who does not speak as much of others. She is extra-ordinarily sensitive and delicate; and her cripple isolates herself into her own illusory world with her own glass menagerie. This paper is an attempt to close study the women protagonists in this play and to reveal that they are a combination of a particular personality type. Williams seems to be interested in the personal and psychological aspects of his women. This paper tries to analyse the psyche of these women and prove that they seem to be more complex and complicated than portrayed in the work.

Muito mais que ornamentos

A peça teatral O zoológico de vidro (The Glass Menagerie), de Tennessee Williams, conta com a participação, além de suas quatro personagens (Amanda, Laura, Tom e Jim), de uma série de “coisas” fundamentais para a construção do drama. Este ensaio tem como objetivo refletir sobre o papel, o estatuto, as interrelações e as implicações estéticas, sociais e existenciais de tais “coisas”, estreitamente vinculadas ao “mundo” das personagens. Para tanto, recorrerá ao pensamento de Martin Heidegger, mais especificamente à sua compreensão sobre o ocupar-se (Besorgen) e o utensílio (Zeug), extraídas de Ser e tempo (parágrafos 12 e 15), e à sua distinção entre “coisa” (Ding), “utensílio” (Zeug) e “obra de arte” (Kunstwerk), formulada na primeira parte de A origem da obra de arte. Ao longo do percurso proposto, examinar-se-á, sobretudo, a “coisa-título” da obra, a saber, a coleção de bichinhos de vidro em miniatura de Laura Wingfield, juntamente com algumas “coisas” coadjuvantes e, até, uma “não coisa”, dotada de relevante interação com a “coisa-título”: a luz. Por meio da aplicação da fundamentação teórica heideggeriana às diversas “coisas” analisadas, complementada por textos de Meyer Schapiro eJacques Derrida, será possível aprofundar temas específicos da peça e problemas mais gerais do campo estético, como as relações entre ilusão e desvelamento, utilidade e inutilidade (ou efetividade e inutilidade, dentro do contexto de uma obra), assim como as distinções entre re-missão e restituição, ornamento e obra de arte.