Exploration Notes

Practitioner: Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire in

order to test the conventions of naturalism and wanted to portray the
working class characters as non-romanticised people. Despite this, the
fundamental ideas of Stanislavski allowed us to explore further into the
piece. For example, Williams created the character of Stanley as a blue
collar, manual labourer, much like most of New Orleans at the time.
Through Stanislavskis idea of Units and Objectives
Interpretation: Whilst studying Act 1 Scene 2, I initially thought Stanley
would be warm and excited to see Stella when he came home from work.
To show this, I said the line whats all this monkey doings? with a playful,
bright tone, almost laughing to myself as I said it. I spoke with a high pitch
and fast pace as well to show Stanleys excitement. However, after
participating in an interpretation exercise I discovered my choices were
not very truthful to the character. As a class, we played out the beginning
of our individual scenes and every time we heard a clap we would have to
alter our interpretation of the text. This helped me determine the
character of Stanley more due to rehearsing the scene with a different
intention each time. Through this, I discovered how Stanley would not
have been ecstatic to see Stella. Instead, he would have been speaking
monotonously because of his long day at work with little intonation,
resulting in a dull tone. Therefore, through participating in this
interpretation exercise I learnt that Stanley would not have been happy
and joyous when coming home from work. Instead, he would have been
miserable, bitter and aggressive.
Visual/Aural/Spatial: When planning our scene between Stanley and
Stella, we initially thought we were going to use a thrust configuration in
order to convey the intimate living situation of the married couple. This
would have allowed the audience to see further into Stanleys mind owing
to the fact that his living space was cramped, and getting even tighter
because of Blanche. By having the audience on all three sides, they would
really get a feel for how overcrowded their house was causing them to see
the scene more from Stanleys view. However, after trying this out it was
clear that Stanley the plays antagonist did not deserve to have his
point of view justified. As an alternative we chose to perform it in an end
on setting as we felt that the audience should be watching the troubled
relationship from afar instead of being in the scene with them, to allow
them to have unbiased opinions on the characters. I decided to put
Stanley in a wife beater and black jeans for the costume, as the white
sleeveless top was often associated with working class men in the 30s
and 40s who abused their wives. The white in particular allowed for irony

as Stanley is certainly not a pure, angelic character, which are often the
connotations of the colour.
Language: A Streetcar Named Desire is often considered as one of the
greatest American plays, and certainly the best of Tennessee Williams
works. Therefore, it goes without saying that the language in the play is
extremely important, so it was essential for us to study it in depth to
discover more about the play. To do so, we played a punctuation exercise
in which we had to do a certain movement whenever punctuation
occurred. Through doing this with my chosen scene, I discovered a lot
about Stanley and how he speaks. The most common punctuation used in
his text is question marks and exclamation points. This indicates that
Stanley is a very aggressive character, and that he is very forceful with his
wife. The question marks show his intimidating behaviour, as he is
constantly putting pressure on Stella by asking so many questions.
Similarly, the exclamation points demonstrate his inability to control his
rage, as the purpose of this form of punctuation is usually to imply a
strong emotion. Whilst exclamation points can often be associated with
excitement and joy, the proceeding dialogue before the punctuation
validates aggression and passion (I'm not going to no Galatoire's for
supper!). *add a comparison to blanche
Non-verbal communication: A particular exercise we partook in was a
connection-disconnection exercise created by the English director Mike
Alfreds. We had to take a step forward on a connecting line and step
backwards on a disconnecting line. For example, in the scene I was
individually studying Stanley and Stella were in the kitchen after Stanley
had arrived home from work. Many of Stanleys lines were connecting
(Yeah?, The place in the country?). I initially interpreted this as Stanley
being intrigued over what Stella was telling him. This was helped
tremendously by the fact that I was taking steps towards Stella. The steps
really showed that Stanley was interested. However, after analysing closer
and playing around with the scene, I discovered that Stanley whilst still
saying connecting lines was not intrigued over the information, but was
merely interrogating Stella over what she was telling him. Therefore, the
steps forward became a lot more slower and sly, to show that was
interrogating Stella rather than asking actual legitimate questions.
Characterisation: We participated in many characterisation exercises to
discover more about the characters in the play. We did an exercise in
which we portrayed the characters as animals to get a better idea of what
their physicality would be like. For example, Blanches animal would most
likely be a moth (especially considering she is described as a delicate
beauty (who) must avoid a strong light (with) her uncertain manner that

suggests a moth). This is because she has delicate tendencies and is

very fragile. Therefore, when walking around as Blanche I stepped lightly
on the ground and moved with a swooping quality to show her delicacy.
This exercise also allowed me to discover how contrasting Stanley was to
Blanche, as I thought Stanleys animal would have been a gorilla. This
meant I moved around the space with a heavy body, stomping my feet
along the ground and filling as much space as I possibly could have.
Through this exercise I discovered Blanches frailty and Stanleys
ferociousness. Similarly, we also did a hot seating exercise in which we sat
as character and had to answer questions in role. I portrayed Stanley in
this practice, and this helped me discover a lot about his body language.
Stanley is clearly not a people person, so to embody this I sat with closed
body language to show that he definitely did not want to be interrogated. I
sat with my arms crossed and positioned myself at an angle away from
the people asking the questions. This made me realise just how
uncomfortable Stanley would feel in this situation.
Vocal awareness: Performing Scene 10 as a radio play helped me
significantly discover the vocal qualities of the central characters,
especially considering it was such an emotionally intense scene. Stanley
was back to his usual, aggressive, interrogating self as seen by the many
questions he asks in the scene. I felt like Stanley would have vocally
sounded sweet and kind, as if he was trying to gain Blanches trust.
However, there should also have been a hint of sarcasm to show the
audience that he isnt actually caring for Blanche, but merely trying to
interrogate her to make her crack. Later on in the scene, I realised Stanley
would also start yelling and speaking with an aggressive tone as this is
when the audience truly sees his animalistic personality. Blanche in
contrast would be so flustered by his vulgar behaviour that she would
speak with a soft, very high pitched, surprised tone to show her terror, in
order to evoke sympathy from the audience. As well as this, I discovered
Stella would have the most humane speaking voice as she tries to keep
the calm between her husband and her sister.