Every production takes a whole team of people to make it come to fruition. And CCT as an organization needs help getting all that work done. We always love to see actors and directors come through the door, but even more we love to find folks who enjoy the technical, productions and house aspects of a life in the theater. We have the following committees that need support from our community:
This is so much like parenting. I have been living with Stella and Stanley, Blanche and Mitch in my head for months. Safely cocooned within my imagination, a vision has been taking shape and taking on more and more definition as I work out my understanding of who these people are and what this story is all about. Now It’s time to bring those ideas forward. It’s time to stat making them real.
A producer will he to begin helping me to refine my vision to fit our bank account. A stage manager will help me discover staging challenges and how to overcome them. I am so fortunate to have Mary Ann Giasson and Kay Henderson to be with me in this process as we take the first steps toward bringing my version of Stella and Stanley, Blanche and Mitch to an audience.
Chris Glass, our set designer, has started turning rough scribbles into an apartment that will house these people and help to tell their story. Frank Booker, our lighting designer, is will be bring us our day and our night, our bright spots and our dark shadows. Rosie Speno, our sound designer, will set the tone and fill the spaces with music and the rush of trains. Michael Martineau, our costume designer, will give us all the image and style that will express the time and personality of each character.
This is the time to parcel out the responsibility of a shared vision, so we can each do our appointed jobs and make A Streetcar Named Desire come alive. It’s not just my baby any more.
When ever I start a new play, either acting or directing, I try to get at the nut of the character. There is an essential core that makes each one who she or he is. With A Streetcar Named Desire, the central theme around which everything else revolves is Blanche’s fragmented spirit and her inability to resolve the traumatic moment of her young husband’s death.
According to Darryl E. Haley, Assistant Professor of English, East Tennessee State University, “Tennessee Williams claimed that all of his major plays fit into the “memory play” format he described in his production notes for The Glass Menagerie. The memory play is a three-part structure:
Blanche is doomed to repeat her trauma until she can grieve it properly and move on. And as long as she keeps on hiding from her own truth, she is hiding in her own shadow. She is not crazy. She is stuck.
That’s the way I see it.
