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 March
 9th, A Streetcar Named Desire
 16th, A Streetcar Named Desire
 23rd, Death of a Salesman
 30th?, Death of a Salesman
 April
 6th, Both plays/ feedback on essays
 13th, The Scarlet letter
 20th, The Scarlet letter
 May
 11th, Poetry 1
 18th, Poetry 2
 25th

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+ general essay question

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Scene from classic 1952 movie

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Streetcar Named Desire, A (1952) -- (Movie Clip) Stella!

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Famous, torrid scene in which Stanley (Marlon Brando), remorseful after a tantrum, shouts for his wife Stella (Kim Hunter), in Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire , 1952, from Tennessee Williams' play.

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Scene 3: 43:00 to 1:06:00

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Texas State University - A Streetcar Named Desire Act 1

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Start studying Drama. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.

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The moment the curtain rises, the earthy, sensual tones of Terence Blanchard's jazzy score fill the Broadhurst Theatre. In a place called Elysian Fields, a black man brings a package of meat home to his wife. Two neighbors, one white and one Latina, sit on a stoop, share stories and laugh. A finely dressed stranger with light skin enters the scene. This is New Orleans, just as Tennessee Williams might have imagined it.

This revival of A Streetcar Named Desire, which opened April 22, marks the first time the 1947 play has appeared on Broadway with a multiracial cast. The production features Blair Underwood (Stanley), Nicole Ari Parker (Blanche), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Stella) and Wood Harris (Mitch). While this production is certainly a milestone, it's actually not the first of its kind.
History in the Making
Director Emily Mann, who knew the famous playwright personally, told The Root that Williams had always wanted to see a major production of Streetcar with a cast of color. Over the years, the playwright continually granted permission for several multiracial and all-black cast theater companies to produce his Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The first African-American production took place in 1953 by the Summer Theatre Co. at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo. In an ongoing effort to highlight the level of black talent in theater, Nick and Edna Stewart produced the first professional production of Streetcar at the Ebony Showcase Theatre in Los Angeles in 1955.

Scholar Philip C. Kolin wrote in : Streetcar Named Desire (Plays in Production), "A strong black presence has always inhabited Streetcar." Williams was a born Southerner, having spent his life surrounded by black culture. In an essay for Broadway.com, Mann wrote, "He understood human beings, period, and he understood New Orleans society. And you can't understand New Orleans and the South without understanding black people." Despite the play's cultural history, a major multiracial production of Streetcar would elude Broadway for years.

In the opening stage directions of the play, Williams described how black entertainers could be heard in a barroom around the corner and how one could hear a piano being played by the "infatuated fluency of brown fingers." Mann said, "The question has never been why should there be a production [of color], but rather, why not?"

For several years, Mann had wanted to direct Streetcar with a cast of color but was waiting for the right opportunity. That opportunity came in the form of producers Stephen Byrd and Alia M. Jones. In 2008 Byrd and Jones produced Broadway's first African-American production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which starred James Earl Jones, Terence Howard, Phylicia Rashad and Anika Noni Rose. The play went on to become the highest-grossing Broadway play that year.

Soon after, Byrd and Jones began preparations to produce a new version of A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon hearing that her favorite play was going to be revived on Broadway, Mann threw her name in the ring for the director's seat. Once Underwood, Parker, Rubin-Vega and Harris were all on board, Mann knew she had a winning cast.
New Layers Emerge
Streetcar became iconic specifically because of Elia Kazan's 1951 classic film, which starred Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh. Mann admitted, "The film version is in the DNA of this country." While Kazan's masterpiece was a heavy burden to bear, Mann knew that their production could set itself apart.

When Mann first approached the producers, she laid out what would become one of the major aspects of the new production - Stella and Blanche DuBois would be descended from a lighter-skinned, upper-class family, while Stanley, Stella's husband, would be a darker-skinned, lower-class black man. Mann's vision coincided with exactly how Byrd and Jones wanted to stage the production.

As to how the audience would react to this interpretation of the script, Mann believed that "a cast of color helped to dispel the ghosts [of past productions]." For example, class and ethnic references took on new racial dimensions. When Blanche referred to Stanley as an "ape," "sub-human" and "bestial" or Stanley derided Blanche's "lily-white fingers," the dialogue revealed a new layer of the interracial boundaries between the DuBois sisters and Stanley.

Mann hoped by staying true to New Orleans, the production would capture the city's natural "melding of so many ethnicities." Famous jazz composer and musician Terence Blanchard, a native to New Orleans, was brought in to create the right musical backdrop. At the top of the second act, Mann staged a jazz funeral, where the multiracial cast dance in a fluid and improvisational style on the stage, an image that brings alive the stage directions that Williams wrote in the text of the play: "New Orleans is a cosmopolitan city where there is a relatively warm and easy intermingling of the races in the old part of town."

While having minorities onstage is a huge feat, there's an even bigger accomplishment that this revival of Streetcar might achieve. In a 2010-2011 survey, the Broadway League reported that 83 percent of all tickets were purchased by white theatergoers. The most impressive part of the success of the 2008 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was the fact that the all-black cast brought in a larger African-American audience, a feat that has eluded most Broadway productions.

At the end of this play, when the curtain closed and the house lights went up, an audience full of people from different ethnicities and races intermingled as they made their way out of the theater. They talked, laughed and shared stories from the play. The setting was like New Orleans but inside a Broadway theater in New York City, much the way Tennessee Williams might have imagined it.
Celena Cipriaso has written for CNN.com, Bitch, Draft, Film Buff and Arts America.

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Multiracial Take on 'A Streetcar Named Desire'

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The moment the curtain rises, the earthy, sensual tones of Terence Blanchard's jazzy score fill the Broadhurst Theatre. In a place called Elysian Fields, a black man brings a package of meat home to his wife. Two neighbors, one white and one Latina, sit on a stoop, share stories and laugh.

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Highlights

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Highlights From "A Streetcar Named Desire"

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Through music

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The Revival of "A Streetcar Named Desire"

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Ella Fitzgerald, "It's Only a Paper Moon"

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"It's Only a Paper Moon" was first published in 1933 but artists like Ella Fitzgerald have contributed to its timeless legacy.

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A Streetcar Named Desire | Denial: Not just a streetcar in New Orleans | 60second Recap®

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Yes, analyzing Analysis isn't particularly exciting. But it can, at least, be enjoyable. Care to prove us wrong?

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The play opens in New Orleans in the 1940s at the ground-floor flat of a young couple, Stanley and Stella Kowalski. Upstairs lives another couple, Eunice and Steve. The dynamic between main characters Stella and Stanley is made immediately clear when he-clearly a gruff dude-tosses a piece of meat to his wife for her to make into dinner. Gender roles anyone? Meanwhile, it's clear that she adores him-she even tails after to watch him bowl with his friends.

After both Kowalskis exit, Blanche DuBois comes onstage. She's Stella's older, single sister (early thirties). She's dressed all in white, delicate, and "moth-like." Blanche waits inside the apartment and has a shot of Stanley's booze.

When Stella comes back, the sisters reunite and Blanche reveals some bad news: their family plantation, Belle Reve, has been lost; they are bankrupt. She had a bit of a break-down, so she's now taking some time off from her teaching position at the school (Blanche teaches high school English). She resents that she had to stay home and watch their older family members die one by one while Stella was off with Stanley. Blanche is also horrified that her sister is living in a dump like this one when they both come from such a wealthy, elite background.

Blanche has another drink. (From now on, just assume Blanche is either having a drink or about to have a drink at all times.) Stella goes to the bathroom and Stanley enters, which means he and Blanche are alone for Big Sexual Tension Scene Number One. While they chat, Blanche reveals that she was married once, but her husband died.

As Blanche is bathing, Stanley finds out from Stella that Belle Reve was lost. He rifles through Blanche's things and believes that her costume jewelry and fake furs are all genuine, expensive pieces -he thinks that she sold Belle Reve and kept the profits for herself. Later, while alone with Blanche, he accuses her of this. She shows him all the papers detailing the estate and its bankruptcy, proving her story correct. Meanwhile, Blanche tries to pull her "Aren't I so cute and pretty?" act with Stanley, and he's having none of it. Before the scene ends, Stanley reveals that Stella is pregnant.

Later that night, the women go out for dinner while Stanley and his buddies play poker at the house. Among said buddies is Mitch, who is single but lives with his elderly, sick mother. He's a bit more sensitive than the others. Stella and Blanche return home at about 2 a.m. to find the men still gambling and very drunk.

Blanche flirts with Mitch and it's clear that he returns her interest. He's a bit of an awkward teddy-bear, though, and Blanche has to carry the conversation entirely. Meanwhile, Stanley is angry that the women are chattering and interfering with his poker night. In a drunken rage, he hits Stella. The two women run upstairs to Eunice's place, and the men all go home after sticking Stanley in the shower and trying to sober him up.

Now under control, Stanley feels horrible at what he's done to his wife. He staggers outside, sobbing, and yells up to her- Stellaaaa!- to come down to him. To Blanche's horror, Stella does, and the two make up. The next morning, Blanche waits for Stanley to leave and then comes downstairs to her sister. She insists that they get out of this horrible situation immediately. Stella says she's happy-she's "thrilled" by Stanley's aggression, not frightened by it.

Meanwhile, Blanche and Mitch start dating. She won't let him see her in any strong light because she's trying to hide her age, and she also won't give him more than a goodnight kiss in the hopes that holding out will make him want to marry her. After one date, she reveals some of her past to Mitch. When she was young, she was married to a man who turned out to be gay. After discovering him with another man, Blanche called him "disgusting," and he killed himself. Since then, Blanche has been haunted by his death (made clear to the audience by the repeated use of the polka song that was playing when he committed suicide).

Tensions continue to rise between Blanche and Stanley, who can't stand his sister-in-law's phony act and her air of superiority. He does a little hunting around and discovers that Blanche has been lying about what went down in Laurel (her hometown). Apparently, she was fired from her job as a schoolteacher after she was discovered having an affair with one of her high school students. She then sank further into scandal, entertaining many gentlemen at a place called the Hotel Flamingo until she was essentially asked to leave town.

Stanley reveals all of this information to Stella (and, we find out later, to Mitch as well). The couple fights over it, since Stella wants to defend and help her sister, whereas Stanley wants Blanche out of his house. In the midst of their argument, Stella goes into labor and Stanley rushes her to the hospital.

While they're at the hospital, Blanche is left alone at the apartment. Mitch comes to see her, but by now he's wised up as to her real character. He wants her to have sex with him, seeing as that's what she does, apparently, with many other men. Blanche refuses; she still thinks Mitch should marry her. Mitch says, basically, "No, thanks" and takes off.

Blanche drinks herself silly until Stanley comes home from the hospital to get some rest, since the doctors say Stella won't deliver the baby until the morning. Now, he's alone with Blanche, which gives him the opportunity to tell her off the way he's always wanted.

Blanche responds to his anger by retreating further into self-delusion. She's all dressed up in her costume jewelry and finest gown, and she claims that she's going on a cruise in the Mediterranean with an old boyfriend. She also claims that Mitch came back to beg her forgiveness, which we all know isn't true.

She and Stanley continue to argue, and Blanche worries that she, a single and attractive woman, shouldn't be alone in an apartment with a man like Stanley. Stanley finds her fear amusing, but then attacks and rapes her. This isn't shown on stage; the scene comes to an end just as he's carrying a nearly unconscious Blanche into the bedroom.

The final scene features Stella (with the new baby) and Eunice helping Blanche to pack her things. They're sending her away to a mental institution. Blanche told Stella that Stanley raped her, but Stella doesn't believe her story. She just thinks her sister has gone mad. Blanche has somehow convinced herself that she's still going on this cruise with her old boyfriend, so she willingly packs and pretties herself.

Meanwhile, Stanley, Mitch, and a few of their buddies are sitting around the kitchen table playing poker. When the doctor comes to take Blanche away, at first she resists. But when he plays the part of the Southern gentleman and offers her his arm, Blanche accepts it and goes willingly. Mitch takes a swing at Stanley, revealing that he knows Blanche's story to be true (or at least strongly suspects it). Horribly distraught, Stella calls after her retreating sister, but submits to Stanley's comforting arms on the porch of their house as Blanche disappears around the street corner and offstage.

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The play opens in New Orleans in the 1940s at the ground-floor flat of a young couple, Stanley and Stella Kowalski. Upstairs lives another couple, Eunice and Steve. The dynamic between main characters Stella and Stanley is made immediately clear when he-clearly a gruff dude-tosses a piece of meat to his wife for her to make into dinner.