presents a brief introduction on the playwrights

1. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
 Tennessee Williams
(1911-81)

2. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
 Dramatises the myth of the Old South
 Plays deal with universal human longing for an ideal
order of being, denied by the harsh realities of life and
time
 Conflicts between animal promiscuity and ladylike
fastidiousness, between physical and spiritual needs,
ideal past and painful present
 His interest lay more in character, mood and condition
than plot
 Frequent use of cinematic techniques undermine
conventions of naturalistic theatre
 Essential condition of a Williams character: sensitive
creature who has no home in an alien world
 “memory plays”

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4. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
 Psychological Realism: fondness of
psychoanalytical approach to character
 “America’s most popular dramatist”
 He wants “a new, plastic theatre which
must take the place of the exhausted
theatre of realistic conventions if the
theatre is to resume vitality.”

5. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie
 Structure: Seven memory scenes framed by present
day monologues of Tom Wingfield, divided into two
parts: (1) Preparation for Gentleman Caller; (2) The
Gentleman Caller
 The point of reference for the characters’ lives is always
the past, rarely the present and hardly ever the future.
 Amanda’s pervasive memories of her Southern girlhood
transport the play’s events beyond the commonplace to
evoke an idyllic and ideal world of romance
 But the dreams are always permeated with images of
separation, loss, loneliness, humiliation and pain.
 Underlying paradigm: an ironic pattern of romantic
expectations, momentary fulfilment, and ultimate loss

6. Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
 The pattern of initial excited anticipation and ultimate
loss is capsulated particularly well in the father’s
sardonic postcard: “Hello—Goodbye.”
 Life, Williams suggests, is a series of losses, beginning
with inflated expectations and ending either in
confrontation with its existential limitations, denial, or
everlasting regret
 Laura’s glass menagerie is the objectification of her
fragile nature and her otherworldly beauty
 Amanda: Archetype of the Great Mother
 Religious imagery: water into wine, escape from a
coffin,
 Laura: saint, cloistered nun, chaste virgin, madonna,
sister
 Tom: images of fragmentation, suffocation (coffin), and
alienation, emblem for the modern malaise to find
meaning in meaninglessness; perennial doubter
 Jim: evokes both multiple romantic possibilities, both
the ideal and the real, invested with multiple heroic
images

7. Women’s Theatre – Caryl Churchill
 “Work of many different forms of representation made
by many different women in many different public
spaces.”
 Study of feminist theatre is also the study of the
struggle against sexism, chauvinism and for women’s
equality.
 “There is a saying that women have always made
spectacles of themselves. However, it has been only
recently, and intermittently, that women have made
spectacles themselves. On this difference turns the
ambiguous identity of a feminist theatre.”
 Social valuing of women’s work
 “Working as a women with a female
perspective”
Caryl Churchill

8. Women’s Theatre – Caryl Churchill
 The mandate and therefore the definition of feminist
theatre “is to interrupt and deconstruct the habitual
performance codes of the majority (male) culture.”
 Seven common demands of feminist theatre: (1) equal
pay, (2) equal education and job opportunities, (3) free
24-hour nurseries; (4) free contraception and abortion
on demand; (5) financial and legal independence; (6)
end of discrimination against lesbians and woman’s
rights to define her own sexuality; (7) freedom from
violence and sexual coercion.

9. Women’s Theatre – USA
Wendy Wasserstein, The Heidi Chronicles
Timberlake Wertenbaker,
Our Country’s Good

10. Women’s Theatre – Britain
Beth Henley, Crimes of the
Heart
Caryl Churchill

11. Women’s Theatre – Canada
Judith Thompson, The Crackwalker, Lion in the Street, Sleigh
Ann-Marie McDonald, Goodnight Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet