A Streetcar Named Desire - Resources

Useful resources for this unit:

If you learn just two quotations, learn these:

BLANCHE
They told me to take a street-car named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields! (1.16)

STELLA
Yes. A different species.
BLANCHE
In what way; what’s he like?
STELLA
Oh, you can’t describe someone you’re in love with! (1.146-8)

http://www.turgingsomedrama.com/streetcar/streetcarbackground.htm
http://english.edusites.co.uk/article/ellb3-street-car-guides/
http://www.teachit.co.uk/index.php?CurrMenu=156&T=120#120
http://www.shmoop.com/streetcar-named-desire/

Tasks for this Unit

Week 1

Lesson 1

1. Mind Map the following words and phrases: Expressionist Theatre; Plastic Theatre; Aristotle; Greek Tragedy; Theatre of Gauze; aestheticism; dichotomy; medieval morality play; memento mori; allusion; allegory; blue piano. Afterwards, look them up and add to your Mind Map. These will be useful to you as you read the play.

2. Read and learn some facts from the following introductory presentation.

A Streetcar Named Desire Intro from Kieran Ryan

3. Read the Introduction in your Heinemann textbook. Then read the epigraph, the fifth stanza of the poem 'The Broken Tower' by Hart Crane at the beginning of your play text. What tone does this poem set for the play? Use your notes from this discussion to set up a Reading Journal in which you will record your thoughts and responses to these activities throughout the reading of the play.

4. Read Scene 1. Think about the importance of stage directions, set, sound, costumes, lighting and the introduction of the characters. Make notes or draw sketches of how you envisage the stage and characters. It's important that you have a firm idea of your own interpretation of the play before you watch a film, where you will be governed through the camera lens by the views of the director.

Homework: Find a poem you have studied that faces the issue of the destructiveness of love or sibling love. Compare it with Scene 1.

Week 1 Lesson 2, Week 2 Lesson 3

5. Watch the 1951 film, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. Tennesee Williams wrote the screenplay. How do the characters and set compare to the way you had imagined them after Scene 1? What is the significance of the soundtrack?

Also see the 1995 version with Alec Baldwin

Week 2 Lesson 2

6. Read Scene 2. Think back on all the references to death and desire so far in the play. Find some examples of animal imagery and consider how these relate to desire. How can you relate this to your study of the literature of love?

7. Greek Theatre - The unities

Place. The setting of the play should be one location: in comedy often a street, in Oedipus Rex the steps before the palace.

Time. The action of the play should represent the passage of no more than one day. Previous events leading up to the present situation were recounted on stage, as Prospero tells Miranda of the events which led to their abandonment on the island.

Action. No action or scene in the play was to be a digression; all were to contribute directly in some way to the plot.

How many of these unities are honoured in the play? What would be the difference if all three were used?

Homework: Look back at your notes on a play you read for Victorian Literature at AS. Compare its structure with the structure of 'Streetcar'.

Week 3 Lesson 1

8. Read Scene 3 and watch the YouTube version here:



Look at Van Gough's 'Billiard Parlour at Night'. What does it suggest to you and why do you think Williams chose to refer to it here?



9.  Consider the following quotation:

Expressionist style had a significant impact on American drama of the 1920s and 1930s, and its influence can be found in the work of such figures as Eugene O'Neill (The Emperor Jones, 1920; The Hairy Ape, 1922; The Great God Brown, 1926), Sophie Treadwell (Machinal, 1928), Elmer Rice (The Adding Machine, 1923), and Thornton Wilder (Our Town, 1938).1

What was it that drove these and other American dramatists toward expressionism? According to O'Neill, it was the notion that theater ought not to reflect petty or mundane activity but rather should provide "refuge from the facts of life which . . . have nothing to do with the truth," bringing us "deep into the unknown within and behind ourselves" (Valgemae, "Expressionism" 196). Or, as Swiss artist Paul Klee noted in a maxim at the opening of his "Creative Confession," "Art does not seek to reproduce the visible, it makes visible the invisible" (quoted in Weisstein 23; translation mine). What expressionist art seeks to render, whether on canvas, in words, or in music, is the human being's inner life, the "extreme moods, such as numinous fear or ecstatic joy, externalized by means of projection and outwardly manifesting themselves as distortions of color, shape, syntax, vocabulary or tonal relationships" (Weisstein 23).

From: "Critical Insights: Tennessee Williams" - "Getting the Colored Lights Going": Expressionism in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (Henry I. Schvey,2010)

Full article: http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_insights/williams_streetcar.htm

Then consider how Williams developed Expressionism:

"To express his universal truths Williams created what he termed plastic theater, a distinctive new style of drama. He insisted that setting, properties, music, sound, and visual effects—all the elements of staging—must combine to reflect and enhance the action, theme, characters, and language." (Alice Griffin) at http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2002/3kramer_print.htm

 Make a diagram of the elements of 'Streetcar' that you think reflect Plastic Theatre.

10. Draw up a table to show how Williams develops the contrast between Mitch and Stanley.

Mitch	Common features	Stanley
Worried about mother	Coarse, direct, powerful	Wants to play cards
Superior to others	Peak of manhood	Orders people about
Alone	Work at same plant	Married
“Gallant”		“Animal thing”

Week 3 Lesson 2

11. Read Scene 4. Adopt the point of view of one of the characters given to you by your teacher: the history student, the psychology student, the drama student, the student of gender politics and the politics student. Discuss with the others in the group to help you see how the text can be read in different ways.

12. Look closely at the interchange between Stella and Blanche on the subject of desire. How could this be central to the play?

13. Read Scene 5. Blanche seems very changeable here. Write a description of how Blanche is presented in this scene, paying particular attention to her actions and language and the directions given by Williams.

Homework: Write up your notes into a short essay on the way Williams uses Plastic Theatre in the play so far.

Week 4 Lesson 1

14. Read Scene 6. Focus on the developing relationship between Blanche and Mitch. Make notes considering:

• what is revealed in the opening about the evening they have spent;
• what has happened on previous evenings;
• Blanche's changes of mood;
• Blanche's manner with Mitch (use of teasing French phrases he can't understand, changing tones and styles of speech);
• Mitch's manner with Blanche (awkward advances, show of strength, uncomfortable shuffling, language);
• their differing ways of moving;
• what each reveal about their past and present situation;
• what you think each feels about this and how these have affected them;
• how music is used and referred to in the scene;
• what you think of the end of the scene when they embrace.

16. Read Scene 7. Note the irony in the contrast between what Blanche sings in the bath and what Stanley says. Consider whether your views about Blanche and Stanley have changed during your reading of the play.

Week 4 Lesson 2

17. Read Scene 8. Consider why Williams chose this point for Stella's labour to begin.

18. In groups of 3, perform Scene 8 onto audio. You will need to rehearse and get appropriate music and sound effects. Consider how you can create tension through tone of voice, pace, use of pauses and overlapping speech or background noises.


20. Read Scene 9. Compare it to Scene 6 when Mitch and Blanche were last together. How is it different? Consider the same points you looked at when working on scene 6 and produce a list of key quotations to highlight the differences.

Homework: Look up AQA's January 2010 Reading for Meaning Question Paper. Use the extract from Tom Stoppard's play 'The Invention of Love' (1997). Write a comparison of the way 'forbidden love' is developed in the Stoppard extract and in 'Streetcar'. Make sure you refer to the ways the writers use form, structure and language to express their thoughts and ideas.

Week 5 Lesson 1

21. Read Scene 10. Look closely at the stage directions, especially the use of lurid shadows, noises outside, music and movements of the characters. Draw up a six-frame film storyboard starting with Stanley's entry: "He walks into the bedroom" and finishing at the scene's end. Indicate:

• images to appear on the screen
• colours and lighting you would use
• sound and dialogue that would be heard

22. Read Scene 11. Spend 10 minutes speed-writing your reaction to the ending, getting all your thoughts on paper as fast as you can. Now share what you have written with members of the group. What similarities and differences are there?

Homework: Revision for your Mock Examination. Go back over your poetry notes and your drama notes from this term. Make sure you know a bank of key quotations relating to the theme of love. You will also need to refer to a Prose work in your examination - use one you read for AS, such as 'Wuthering Heights' or one of your wider reading novels. Ensure you can comment on the way writers use form, structure and language on the theme of love for at least three poems (including a sonnet), 'Streetcar' and the novel.

25. Questions to ask yourself on the play (based on Bloom's Taxonomy)
Knowledge Questions

1. Who are the characters in the play? Where in the play do they appear?
2. When and where does the story take place?
3. Describe the main events in each scene.
4. What new facts do we learn about the characters in each scene?
5. Select some examples of powerful language for
6. each character or each scene.
7. Are there any words you don’t understand? Make a list of them and look them up.

Comprehension Questions

1. Summarise each character's experience.
2. Explain the main ideas presented in each scene and the play as a whole.
3. Summarise the main events of play and how they relate to the main idea of the play.
4. Explain how the play is tragic/comic/realistic/poetic.
5. Create a timeline of the events in the play, link this to the emotions presented at each point.
6. Explain how the themes of the play link to the plot
7. development.

Application Questions

1. How could this scene be adapted for the stage / film / a modern setting?
2. Write a series of instructions for an actor playing one of the characters, explore how the complexities of a character can be presented.
3. Recreate through drama a scene from the play, focussing on the emotions / the dialogue / the themes / the symbols.
4. What alternative solutions could there be to the conflicts faced by the characters?
5. How could you modify the ending without losing its power?
6. Apply your understanding of the characters, by writing an internal monologue for one of the scenes.
7. Create your own version of one of the missing scenes or conversations in the play. How would you stay true to the playwright’s style?

  Analysis Questions

1.  Analyse the themes present in the play. How does the playwright deliver the play’s message / moral?
2.  Compare the play to another text influenced by Expressionism.
3. Analyse the opening and the closing scenes. How have the characters’ experiences changed them?
4. Contrast how tension and danger are shown alongside the mundane and bland.
5. Examine the binary opposites that are present, what
6. patterns are created in the text?
7. What can you infer about the playwright’s views on women, the American Dream, death, sexual desire and madness.

 Synthesis Questions

1.  How does the antagonist fulfil the role of an archetypical villain?
2.  Write a thesis statement concerning each character and each theme.
3.  How does the play add to the genre of Southern Gothic?
4.  Create the scene following the final scene of the play. Share this new scene with your classmates.
5.  Imagine you are the playwright, which scene would you modify or change? Justify your answers.
6.  Use evidence from the play alone, write a social / cultural document about New Orleans.

 Evaluation Questions

1. Argue how the play was influenced by cultural, moral, religious, racial and political values of society.
2. How would you evaluate the playwright’s ability to engage the audience?
3. Research the four draft titles for the play. Why do you think Williams rejected them?
4. Assess the ways in which the key images, symbols and motifs highlight the plays themes.
5. On reading the play, what conclusions can be drawn about men and women and society?
6. In your opinion, why is the play successful or unsuccessful?