In A Streetcar Named Desire Williams describes Blanch as being 'mothlike' which are known to be attracted by light. Additionally he describes Blanche as being very weary of her appearance when Blanche says "And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I won’t be looked at in this merciless glare". This is a clear indication of the symbolism of light and connotes the meaning of light of numerous things in A Streetcar Named Desire. This first instance is the most important, and reveals Blanche’s fear of showing her leaving her insecure about her appearance. I used this information to influence my performance of subtext from where I used Blanches story of her husband and acted using it I then enclosed my movement and made myself feel small to show my own belittling as Blanche using quick movements to show my self-hate for my appearance these movements were almost "mothlike" too.
Characterization
In today's lesson we looked further
into the characterization of Stanley, Blanch and Stella from 'A streetcar named Desire'. We first did a
frantic assembly warm up to get us up and moving ready to do some
improvisation. We then created still images from scene 3 in
the play where we see Stanley calling for Stella to come back after
he had violently hit her, Michael and Hannah did a really good example of
the idea that Stanley stood for his dominance and masculinity however
still relied on Stella's presence to calm him and almost that he
feels he would be destroyed without Stella being there with his and
possibly feeling slightly dependent on Stanley much like a child is
on their mother. Michael and Hannah's interpretation of this was
Stella stood with her back towards Stanley while Stanley grabbed her
hand looking hopeless. Me and James created a still images of Stella standing
up while Stanley was on his knees with his head resting on Stella's stomach,
this was our attempt to show the child like image of Stanley and Stella's
relationship to hit on Stanley's childlike dependence on Stella like a mother
and her son.
After doing this we continued on
to pursue in doing some improvisation using the idea of Stanley and
Stella's marriage. We looked at the scene 4 where Stella first brings up their
marriage and how Stanley smashed light bulbs with the heel of her slipper. We were
then asked to improvise Stella first telling Blanche that she was
getting married. Personally James and I felt that we were to
set this before Blanche had ever met Stanley in order
to rid of tension and upset from the improvisation but to show the
"sisterly love" between the two characters and show Blanches reaction
to marriage on a whole and not just to Stanley being the groom. This is because
we wanted to hit on Blanches past marriage to show her sorrow of marriage
and show hoe her experiences have affected her overlook on marriage.
