Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Tennessee Williams: Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams "was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. His friends began calling him Tennessee in college, in honor of his Southern accent and his father's home state. Williams's father, C.C. Williams, was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker. Williams's mother, Edwina, was a Mississippi clergyman's daughter prone to hysterical attacks. Until Williams was seven, he, his parents, his older sister, Rose, and his younger brother, Dakin, lived with Edwina's parents in Mississippi.

In 1918, the Williams family moved to St. Louis, marking the start of the family's deterioration. C.C.'s drinking increased, the family moved sixteen times in ten years, and the young Williams, always shy and fragile, was ostracized and taunted at school. During these years, he and Rose became extremely close. Edwina and Williams's maternal grandparents also offered the emotional support he required throughout his childhood. Williams loathed his father but grew to appreciate him somewhat after deciding in therapy as an adult that his father had given him his tough survival instinct.

After being bedridden for two years as a child due to severe illness, Williams grew into a withdrawn, effeminate adolescent whose chief solace was writing. At sixteen, Williams won a prize in a national competition that asked for essays answering the question “Can a good wife be a good sport?” His answer was published in Smart Set magazine. The following year, he published a horror story in a magazine called Weird Tales, and the year after that he entered the University of Missouri to study journalism. While in college, he wrote his first plays, which were influenced by members of the southern literary renaissance such as Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, Allen Tate, and Thomas Wolfe. Before Williams could receive his degree, however, his father forced him to withdraw from school. Outraged because Williams had failed a required ROTC program course, C.C. Williams made his son go to work at the same shoe company where he himself worked.

After three years at the shoe factory, Williams had a minor nervous breakdown. He then returned to college, this time at Washington University in St. Louis. While he was studying there, a St. Louis theater group produced two of his plays, The Fugitive Kind and Candles to the Sun. Further personal problems led Williams to drop out of Washington University and enroll in the University of Iowa. While he was in Iowa, Rose, who had begun suffering from mental illness later in life, underwent a prefrontal lobotomy (an intensive brain surgery). The event greatly upset Williams, and it left his sister institutionalized for the rest of her life. Despite this trauma, Williams finally managed to graduate in 1938.

In the years following his graduation, Williams lived a bohemian life, working menial jobs and wandering from city to city. He continued to work on drama, however, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying playwriting at the New School in New York. His literary influences were evolving to include the playwright Anton Chekhov and Williams's lifelong hero, the poet Hart Crane. He officially changed his name to Tennessee Williams upon the publication of his short story “The Field of Blue Children” in 1939. During the early years of World War II, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter and also prepared material for what would become The Glass Menagerie.

In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York and won the prestigious New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, catapulting Williams into the upper echelon of American playwrights. A Streetcar Named Desire premiered three years later at the Barrymore Theater in New York City. The play, set in contemporary times, describes the decline and fall of a fading Southern belle named Blanche DuBois. A Streetcar Named Desire cemented Williams's reputation, garnering another Drama Critics' Circle Award and also a Pulitzer Prize. Williams went on to win another Drama Critics' Circle Award and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

Much of the pathos found in Williams's drama was mined from the playwright's own life. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity were all part of Williams's world. His experience as a known homosexual in an era unfriendly to homosexuality also informed his work. Williams's most memorable characters, many of them female, contain recognizable elements of their author, Edwina, and Rose. His vulgar, irresponsible male characters, such as Stanley Kowalski, were likely modeled on Williams's own father and other males who tormented Williams during his childhood.

Williams's early plays also connected with the new American taste for realism that emerged following the Depression and World War II. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are trying to rebuild their lives in postwar America: Stanley and Mitch served in the military, while Blanche had affairs with young soldiers based near her home.

Williams set his plays in the South, but the compelling manner in which he rendered his themes made them universal, winning him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. However, most critics agree that the quality of Williams's work diminished as he grew older. He suffered a long period of depression following the death of his longtime partner, Frank Merlo, in 1963. His popularity during these years also declined due to changed interests in the theater world. During the radical 1960s and 1970s, nostalgia no longer drew crowds, and Williams's explorations of sexual mores came across as tired and old-fashioned.

Williams died in 1983 when he choked on a medicine-bottle cap in an alcohol-related incident at the Elysée Hotel in New York City. He was one month short of his seventy-second birthday. In his long career he wrote twenty-five full-length plays (five made into movies), five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. The mark he left on the tradition of realism in American drama is incredible.

The Glass Menagerie is one of those standard classics that you can use on a Regents exam, as well as learn good playwriting from Williams. What follows is a little help in unlocking the enigma of the play.


After reading a learning a little about Tennessee Williams, work together in small groups or alone and please begin reading The Glass Menagerie aloud. As you read, consider Tom's role in the play as "narrator" and the idea that what we are seeing is a reflection of his memory, not the actual events themselves. This technique is lovingly called a MEMORY PLAY.

Characteristics of Memory Plays:
1. Often use a "narrator" or "first person" character to tell the story.
2. Memory is tenuous and therefore set pieces or props, costumes, setting are representative or use synecdoche.
3. Scenes and characters are atmospheric and subjective. We are getting the narrator's (often the protagonist's) opinion and view of other characters, events. Thus, the style of a memory play is often EXPRESSIONISTIC.
4. Not exactly realism (which strives to present all facts realistically and objectively) the memory play allows for a vivid expression to suggest meaning (metaphor, for example).
And the title: a menagerie is a collection of animals. How is this Southern family of collection of unhappy, brittle (glass), animals? Consider.

HOMEWORK: Complete The Glass Menagerie over break. We will finish watching Amadeus when we return, sorry about that... 

Monday, December 17, 2012

Amadeus: Act One, Day 2

Please hold on to your homework (The Amadeus Notes) until the end of today's class. Turn in this paper at the end of today's class.

Reading, seeing other playwrights' works, and writing your own plays will help you establish writing skills and help establish a personal concept as to what separates a good play from one that does not work as much.

Please read the article: "What Makes a Play" and answer the questions for HOMEWORK:
1. Why is "construction" important for theatrical writing?
2. What is the definition of a "play"?
3. What are some differences between playwriting and other forms of writing?
4. Why is conflict an important literary element to use when writing a play?
5. What are some danger signals of cinematic writing that a PLAYwright should be aware of?
Today we will begin watching the first act of Amadeus.

HOMEWORK: Complete your reading of Amadeus. Please pick up the play The Glass Menagerie from the library. Bring this play with you to next class. Please read the article: "What Makes a Play"and answer the five ?'s to turn in next class.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Amadeus (Research & Act One)

Please take the first 10 minutes of class today to do the following:

1. Find out who Peter Shaffer is. Read about him here.
2. Who was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?
3. Style and fashion of the Rococo & Georgian period. What passed as fashion of the day? What might the costumes look like?

When instructed, please go next door. On your way, pick up a part to read out loud in class, if you would like to read today. If you select a part, please make sure you have the energy and enthusiasm to carry through with the part so we don't fall asleep. Readers will get a point of extra-credit.

As we read the play Amadeus by Peter Shaffer, please follow along, take notes, and complete as much of the handout as possible today.

Salieri: Scene 1-2 transition.
Mozart: Adagio, pg. 21
Mozart: Marriage of Figaro, pg. 29
Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio: "Martern aller arten" pg. 31
Mozart: The Abduction from the Seraglio (Turkish Finale) pg. 31
Mozart: 29th Symphony in A Major, pg. 49
Mozart: Kyrie from the C minor Mass, pg. 50

HOMEWORK: Complete the reading and analysis of the play's plot and setting as homework. This is due next class.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Driving Miss Daisy: Plot

A plot is the sequence of actions or incidents occurring in a story (often in chronological order). In the play Driving Miss Daisy, the author Alfred Uhry relies on plot to show the lives of his main characters Hoke and Daisy.

Today, please examine the play for its plot. Use the handout sheet to track the major events of the play and how the playwright begins, develops, and ends the plot. What central events set off a chain of events (cause and effect) in the play? Follow the MAJOR events in the play and how these events CAUSE an EFFECT that creates a chain of events.

When you have completed your sheet and analysis of the play, please turn in this sheet for participation credit.

If you finish early, I know you are stressed about completing your project for Ms. Gamzon. Please use any time remaining today completing her assignment. Don't waste your time in the lab! No music, no distractions, no wandering around procrastinating! Get your work done!

HOMEWORK: If you have not yet read Driving Miss Daisy, please complete your reading. Also please read "Being a Playwright" (the handout from last class) please do so and complete three of the five exercises at the end of the chapter IN YOUR JOURNAL. See previous post for more details. Otherwise, none.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Driving Miss Daisy & Intro To Playwriting

Please complete the following today in class:

Journal Writing/Brainstorming/Gathering Ideas: 1st step in the writing process:
  • 1. In your notebook/journal, etc. write the first 10 names you can think of.
  • 2. In your notebook/journal, etc. write the first 10 settings you can think of.
We will now go the library to pick up the play Driving Miss Daisy. When we return from the library, please look up the following information:
1. Who is Alfred Uhry?
2. What year did Uhry write Driving Miss Daisy? What year did he win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?
3. What was Atlanta, Georgia like in 1940's through the 1970's?
4. What famous historical American figure lived in Atlanta, Georgia in 1948?
The third question concerns SETTING, an essential element of playwriting. Every story and script needs an interesting SETTING.

A setting is: The natural and artificial scenery or environment in which characters in literature live and move. It is the when and where your story takes place.
A setting can be: INTERIOR (happening inside) or EXTERIOR (happening outside)
A setting includes: 
  • Artifacts or Props (the things characters use)
  • Clothes (the things characters wear)
  • Time of day, conditions of the weather
  • Geography and location
  • Trees, animals, and nature
  • Inside and outside sounds, smells, sights
  • All physical and temporal objects. So that means setting refers to:
    • The location (locale) or place the story is set
    • The weather (including the season)
    • The time
    • The time period (historical period)
As you read Driving Miss Daisy, please identify all aspects of the SETTING. See handout.

Please gather in these groups to read the play. Each student should take one of the parts of the play and read it aloud together. One person should read the stage directions and keep track of time.
Group A: Branden, Diamond, Kayli, Ben, Evan
Group B: Frances, Carly, Imani G., Thiery
Group C: Gena, Nicole, Ethan, Nathan
Group D: Imani M, Shayzonique, Isaiah, Grace
Group E: Alexis, Jahni, Kamphasong, Damarys
HOMEWORK: Finish the play on your own. Bring your plays back with you to next class. Please read the chapter handout on "Being a Playwright" from the book The Elements of Playwriting by Louis Catron.

Particularly take note of the writerly advice (most of which should sound familiar): to overcome a blank page, the only way to push through "writer's block" is to write. Set time aside every day to write. For you (and your busy lives) use the time given to you every day in the lab to focus on your writing. You can socialize later. The more you practice, the better a writer you will become!

This marking period we will be doing a lot more reading. Find inspiration from reading plays and seeing plays, when possible. Get involved in theatre in order to understand the form. This is how you grow as a student and a writer.

After completing the handout, please complete three of the five exercises at the end in your journal. (Do not turn these in to me--put them in your journal). You should continue to keep a journal to jot down ideas and exercises we complete in class. Continually add to your brainstorming. As you know, brainstorming or gathering ideas is the first step in the writing process. What you put there you can use for writing projects later.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Fiction: Unit Test & Forum Response

After taking the Unit Exam on Fiction, please visit the creative writing forum and post your response to your second short story collection. This post is due by Sunday, December 9 at 11:59 p.m. The forum question is posted on the...forum.

Our next unit will cover stage and film writing. On the index card, write down the last 10 (or as many, up to 10) plays or live performances you have seen, or plays you have read. Turn in your index card by the end of class for participation credit.

HOMEWORK: None.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Fiction Portfolio Due!

 Please choose one of the stories from your short story collection and complete either "Story Map #1" or "Story Map #2" for that story. Turn in your analysis by the end of class today.

When you have completed this task, please work on preparing your portfolio:

What goes into a portfolio? Pretty much everything you write.

The purpose of the portfolio is to collect your writing in various stages of completion. A first draft is always a good start, and the more you write, the stronger your writing should be if you are applying the concepts and skills we have been working on in class. As such, I should see anywhere from 3-8 short stories. Some of these will have a second or third draft attached to them, others may still be first drafts. Some stories will be short, others longer. I will be grading your work on a rubric (see above by end of class). Portfolios should include a short reflection about how you're doing in the class. This is where you can explain your progress to me. If there are issues that are harming your progress, please let me know what they are.

Your portfolio is due at the end of class today.

On Thursday, there will be a test on the following:
Plot; plot structure: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, crisis or turning point, climax, denouement or resolution, etc.; conflict; the different types of conflict; linear versus non-linear plots; setting; setting (artificial or manufactured and natural); exterior versus interior settings; locale; functions of setting; regional writers; POV; the different types of point of view; omniscience; multiple-viewpoint; skeptical POV; objective 3rd person POV; choosing a point of view; hamartia; round versus flat characters; characterization; character types; portraying a character; persona; description (particularly using description to characterize a character); character key terms; ways to develop a character; structuring a story and techniques to structure a story (Nov 1 post); ideas for fiction; genres; reader's expectations of any of the following genres: science fiction, romance, literary fiction, historical fiction, mystery/thrillers, fantasy, realistic fiction, etc.; types of readers: fantacists, realists, pragmatists, etc.
To review, please go back starting from Oct. 22 (the beginning of the second marking period) and read the blog posts. Take notes as appropriate and note everything on these posts. Additionally, read the handouts on: genres (brochures), POV, character, characterization, description, setting, plot, etc. 

HOMEWORK: Study for the unit exam.

About this course!

This course stresses understanding the characteristics & techniques in the literary genres of fiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. This course will continue to build on students’ reading and writing skills begun in previous creative writing classes. Readings and discussions of works by major writers in the field will be examined as inspiration and models of fine writing. This educational blog is designed for the use of the students at the School of the Arts in Rochester, NY.