from Lexi

A Streetcar Down Legacy Lane
Historically, before the twentieth century, the role of art was to represent and imitate the world as realistically and authentically as possible so that every audience member could understand and connect to the material: painters painted landscapes or cityscapes, for example, and theatre companies put on productions of plays that portrayed the world as it was physically perceived by everyone. Playwrights like Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw were revered for their realistic representations of society. However, in the early 1900s, a new movement developed in the arts: expressionism. Expressionism was an extremely significant step forward because it is, by definition, an artistic style that stresses and emphasizes an artist’s emotional (or “expressive”) experience in the world, rather than the world’s concrete physicality. This new approach to art was especially prevalent in music, visual arts, and the theatre, and was a completely different way of viewing the world: this style was not based on the typical objective depiction of nature and reality, but rather was founded on personal experience, and was entirely subjective to each artist.
In the theatre, expressionist playwrights began emerging. Some of the most prevalent were August Strindberg from Sweden and Frank Wedekind from Germany, who impacted later playwrights on an international level: in America, for instance, they greatly affected the works of Eugene O’Neill, Elmer Rice, and Sophie Treadwell.
However, perhaps the most well-known American playwright became a pioneer in both the theatre and in film because he merged realism with expressionism to create works that represented the “tangled domestic portraits and the idiomatic language” (Tischler 25) of Southern United States and in which he was able to “express the full range of human emotion” (Tischler 25) through the complex psychological webs of his characters. Through the unique, innovative, lyrical, and poetic style of his plays, which were almost always set in the deep South where he grew up, he addressed many themes that not only affected people on a regional level, but also touched people universally.
This man was Tennessee Williams.
Born on March 29, 1911, in Colombus, Mississippi as Thomas Lanier Williams, he was “early influenced by his grandfather, his mother, his sister, and the Mississippi Delta where he spent the happiest years of his youth” (Donahue 2), as well as by his love for literature (the Waverly novels, and stories by Charles Dickens) and plays by Shakespeare, Strindberg, and Chekhov. He began writing plays in University, but it was not until 1937 that he found the theme which he would spend the rest of his life writing about: his sister, Rose, due to signs of mental breakdown, “underwent a prefrontal lobotomy” (Answers.Com) that resulted in placing her in lifetime of institutional care. “So deeply did Williams empathize with her trauma that it shaped his master theme – the confining nature of human existence” (Answers.Com).
Williams’ greatest legacy is indeed found in the characters he left behind in his plays. Characters like Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar Named Desire, Big Daddy, Brick, and Maggie the Cat from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and both Laura and Amanda Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie, to name a few, are all memorable characters because they are “emotionally displaced people who generally suffer from the inability to face reality or to come to terms with their environment” (Donahue 220). His plays are teeming with frustrated and tormented people who are plagued with loneliness, fear of life, and who desperately try to reach out to others around them for help. Perhaps these characters are so memorable and successful because they were particularly important to Williams himself: he was notorious for fashioning them based on people who were especially present and relevant in his own life, as well as on himself. For example, Scott Fitzgerald in his play Clothes was someone he created to express his own fears of failure and “loss of creativity” (The New York Times). As he was once quoted saying: “You can’t manufacture unreal people. You have to transmute their reality through your concept of them. They became sifted through myself so that something of my own life went into their creation” (The New York Times).
However, the characters he created were not only great because of their autobiographical roots in Williams’ own life. They have also become legendary because he found a way, through the richness of the English language and his understanding of human psychology, to recreate “a state of mind or soul rather than simply constructing a plot” (Donahue 220). This is very important because, although critics often define his works as “psychological tragedies” (Donahue 220), they look negatively on the fact that he rarely ends his dramas on a positive note and that they “simply end without a resolution of the conflict or tragic condition” (Donahue 230). But is that not the definition of “tragedy”? Nevertheless, Williams’ insight on the complexity and conflicts of his characters are what make his plays great works. And although they all physically take place in settings that could define his works as realism, his main concern when writing was the internal world of his characters and how he could dramatize their inner lives and struggles. In the end, the point was for the audience to experience the world of these tormented and tragic people through their eyes, and not through the objectivity of the classic “fourth wall” of the stage. “Williams has stated his preference for this interior world of his characters” (Donahue 220) and his plays continue to invite audience after audience to watch them and appreciate the human being in every character. As Tennessee Williams stated: “I don’t deal with social problems because those are not the problems that move me” (Donahue 220).
But however unintentionally, Williams has indeed left behind a legacy other than his characters. These are found in the social matters addressed in his plays (such as the nymphomania and rape experienced by Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire). People had previously resisted touching upon these subjects, and despite the fact that these matters had indeed been raised in other forms of literature (such as poetry, novels, and short stories), “it had not previously been accepted in the theater” (Donahue 221). Although the content of Williams’ plays initially received reactions of indignation and disapproval from audiences and the general public alike, they became milestones that greatly changed both the perception and the portrayal of sexuality and violence in the theatre. This enormous shift in perspective and theatrical representation also contributed significantly to the many elements in his work “which made him a revolutionary and innovative playwright” (The New York Times).
Williams’ plays are set in the deep South of the United States, much like where he grew up, and, as he stated, “is the beauty spot of creation, a dark, wide spacious land that you can breathe in” (Donahue 3). Inspired by the land, its culture, and the people that inhabit it, Williams addressed themes and ideals that he believed were especially prevalent to that region of the United States: the “Southern way of life gradually being displaced by a society with different values” (Donahue 3), for one, was a recurring theme, although buried innately in each character. He also addressed less specific themes, such as “the duality of flesh and spirit” (Fedder 122), and “the destructive tendencies of the bourgeois civilization” (Fedder 122). The examination of these themes in a Southern context “not only helped to pave the way for other writers, but also helped the South find a strong voice in those auspices where before it had only been heard as a whisper” (The Mississippi Writers Page). In short, Williams helped Southern America find a stable and more influential place in the world of the theatre.
However, Williams’ humanistic themes stretched far beyond the South of the United States, and “rose above regionalism” (The Mississippi Writers Page), to touch the world on an international level and universal scale. His works influenced people everywhere due to his lyrical and poetic dialogue, high dramatic tension, and real, “human”, vulnerable characters to which any audience could connect.
Likewise, Williams’ plays gave actors the opportunity to further their careers by playing roles that were rich in realism and psychologically in-depth. A good example of this is acting legend Marlon Brando, whose creation of the role of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway launched his career as an established and greatly admired actor. He later played the same role on film, which founded a steady and reliable career for him in the movie industry, placed him in extremely high demand, and got him tremendous fame and fortune.
Tennessee Williams’ “plays not only shaped the aspirations of an entire generation of playwrights, directors and actors, but they also re-defined the scope and the poetic possibilities of the American theater” (The New York Times). He left us great characters to examine, exceptional roles to play, notable literature to read and analyze, and impacted the world of the theatre in a monumental scale that raised the bar and set the standard for future generations of playwrights worldwide.
But what is truly remarkable about Tennessee Williams is his unforgettable, unique style: the mélange between more recent plays by Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg, contrasted with the Shakespearian and Greek tragedies that inspire, influence, affect, and guide the development of his plays must truly be what makes him an unforgettable and permanent presence in the theatre. Due to his combination of realism and expressionism, and his success at having bridged the gap between classicism and modernism, Tennessee Williams can be considered futuristic because he never severed his ties with the past while dominating the present with originality and personality.
That makes him kind of a big deal, does it not?