Director's notebook: Part 1 done. Part 2, 3 and 4 ready to go!

Description:
In this week of vacations, I advanced part 1 regarding "the play text, its context and the ideas represented in the play" for our director's notebook mock on Tennessee Williams' social realistic play "A streetcar named desire"while recording some flourishing artistic responses of the play when read once continuously at a glance. However, these vacations I focused more on concluding part 1. Moreover, I also read "Alice in wonderland" by Lewis Carroll but still need to finish reading its sequel, "Alice through the looking glass".

Analysis:
The historical, cultural and theoretical context of a play goes beyond the play itself. In order to understand the behaviour and personal traits of a character or the purpose of his/her actions during the development of the plot of a play, directors must dig beyond the context.Why? Not only to know in which period of time was the play written or presented but, to link it with the cultural context of the era with the character development of the character,  to understand the true reasons and behavioral responses of each of them when acting in the play. Therefore, the context links with character's life, for the director to discover and understand the expectations each character has according to their individual and social context. For instance, in order to understand completely the play, it's plot, character behaviour or others in "A streetcar named Desire" we must investigate deeply in the inner and outer context of the play. E.g: Blanche DuBois as a fading southern belle represents the banishing southern aristocratic system that was defeated by the northern states in the American Civil war (1861-1865). While, Stanley Kowalski incarnates the newly industrialised era of America where as a polish soldier retreating from WW2 returns to his home, the metropolitan and developed city of New Orleans to pursue his "American dream", home ownership. Since the play was presented and premiered at the Ethel Barrymore theatre in New York near the endings of WW2, Tennessee Williams decides to explore these effects in his plays such as the industrialization era as a further effect of the great Depression (1930s). Therefore, these two characters are opposing poles that contrast completely in the play since Blanche as an intruder attempting to find her safe haven as an aging southern belle disrupts Stanley's haven as well. As a director, I learned that I needed a complete picture of the background of play and its' context in order to make precise linkages between the context and the characters attitude and responses towards the action of the play. whilst, being able to develop a vision and concept applicable to the play.

The director's notebook is about flying into your imagination, however taking measures to be applicable to the playwright's original ideas. For instance, Blanche DuBois has a constant struggle between the incapability of her fantasy world to overcome her reality and illicit past she sheds during the play, which is one of Tennessee Williams' themes presented in "Streetcar". As Tennessee Williams said in the new york post, " they reflect somehow the particular psychological turmoil I was going through when I wrote them”. As himself, he describes writing “as an escape from a world of reality in which I (he) felt acutely uncomfortable.” becoming to his “place of retreat, my (his) cave, my (his) refuge". Tennessee Williams plays are autobiographical, reflecting his psychological turmoil and dysfunctional family relationships.Therefore a strong connection between Tennessee Williams and his archetypical character Blanche Dubois is within the state of mind they share; their inability of fantasy to overcome reality because even though they attempt escaping from their reality, their reality reaches them, letting them never escape totally from it. Both feel extremely uncomfortable with their past, Tennesse Williams living with his dysfunctional family and Blanche Dubois with her remorse of being guilty of Allan Grey's suicide, the loss of her heritage plantation of "Belle Reve" or her promiscuous reputation in Laurel. Both need the medium to escape from the reality into their "refugee and place of retreat"(TW), leading to both making the decision of flying into a fantasy world while escaping from their world of reality at all cost. Therefore as a director, the principal artistic and managerial function is the decide-making of the interpretation of the script to produce a final performance. I had my ideas when reading "streetcar" again continuously without stopping, and an interesting impression I received was the fact that each scene seems to be as if a bomb was ticking.  This vision could be applicable since the plot of the play is about Blanche's fall and decline in New Orleans, how she becomes into a pathological liar with all the lies she states to the rest. Blanche believes that lying is the best escape from reality however Stanley at a first glance with his direct and transparent personality dismantles Blanche's fictions, doing everything he can do to unravel them. As Dorothy Allison once said “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”, in Blanche's case each lie to herself unraveled by Stanley approximates her to her destruction, one lie equals one second less for the bomb to explode. In Blanche's perspective, her world slowly falls apart, beyond her control when her addiction for lying controls her while her lies whether than saving her do the opposite, consumes her completely. By then, deluding herself and distorting her reality. 

Reflection:
However, one thing I noticed presently even in this entry is all the ideas, first impressions and visions are mixed together which are quite difficult in separating in different parts and sections of the directors notebook since all link and overlaps each other. I have so many ideas in my mind, overlapping each other from which I am scared if they distance me from my original vision and concept. Another struggle that appears to my mind is that we are not able to interfere with the original script, no changes or alterations. Since I want to have this atmosphere of tension, where inside Blanche's head there is a bomb ticking, waiting for her downfall and reaching the 0 each time as the play develops. Therefore, how can I fly to the sky if I can't make any alterations to the script? What if I want to use a different type of music for Blanche's ultimate destruction even though in the script it states that the Varsouviana polka has to be played? I mean, how can I make the playwright's ideas strongly clear through my two moments selected if I have a different focus for the staging of the moments?