By 1943, Williams was in Hollywood, and so transformed the short story into a spec script called The Gentleman Caller. She was presented as a desperately shy young woman with a fearsome mother, who went unnamed in this early incarnation. THE GLASS MENAGERIE BEGAN AS A SHORT STORY IN 1941.Īt 30, Williams wrote "Portrait of a Girl in Glass," which centered on the glass figure-loving Laura, rather than her brother Tom. Other examples of memory plays are Harold Pinter's Old Times and Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. Because of its considerably delicate or tenuous material, atmospheric touches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important part." He goes on to encourage those staging the show to be "unconventional" in their productions, noting such exploration was essential to preserving the vitality of theater. In its production notes, Williams wrote, "Being a 'memory play', The Glass Menagerie can be presented with unusual freedom of convention. Williams coined the phrase to explain this groundbreaking new style. THE GLASS MENAGERIE WAS THE FIRST MEMORY PLAY. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic." 3. But in his first monologue, he warns, "The play is memory. The story focuses on the impoverished Wingfield family at a time when their matriarch Amanda is pressuring her grown son Tom to find a suitor for his fragile sister Laura. THE NARRATOR WARNS HE IS AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR.
It omits some details others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart." 2. Williams says as much in The Glass Menagerie's notes on set design, which read, "The scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic.
The format gives the playwright more creative freedom in the narrative, as memories are affected by emotion and temporal distance. The play's story is narrated by a central character looking back on the events presented.
But beyond its delicate glass unicorn and heartbreaking drama, this Tennessee Williams play proved to be a defining moment for the author-and for theater history. The Glass Menagerie is an American classic that tells a tragic family tale of love, bitterness, and abandonment.
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