Thinking-Training

The Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Circle Award winning play. A Streetcar Named Desire is the tale of a catastrophic confrontation between fantasy and reality, embodied in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.

Presents a collection of ten critical essays on Williams's play "A Streetcar Named Desire" arranged in chronological order of publication.

The Laramie Project, one of the most-performed theater pieces in America, has become a modern classic. In this expanded edition, it is joined by an essential and moving sequel to the original play. On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of brutality and hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepard’s death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of the town, the event was deeply personal. In the aftermath, Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project went to Laramie and conducted more than 200 interviews with its citizens. From the transcripts, the playwrights constructed an extraordinary chronicle of life in the town after the murder. In The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, the troupe revisits the town a decade after the tragedy, finding a community grappling with its legacy and its place in history. The two plays together comprise an epic and deeply moving theatrical cycle that explores the life of an American town over the course a decade.

A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th century marriage norms. In the central character of Nora, Ibsen epitomized the human struggle against the humiliating constraints of social conformity. Nora's ultimate rejection of a smothering marriage and life in 'a doll's house' shocked theatergoers of the late 1800s and opened new horizons for playwrights and their audiences.

Exhaustively researched and almost flirtatiously opinionated, When Blanche Met Brando is everything a fan needs to know about the ground-breaking New York and London stage productions of Williams' "Streetcar" as well as the classic Brando/Leigh film. Sam Staggs' interviews with all the living cast members of each production will enhance what's known about the play and movie, and help make this book satisfying as both a pop culture read and as a deeper piece of thinking about a well-known story. Readers will come away from this book delighted with the juicy behind-the-scenes stories about cast, director, playwright and the various productions and will also renew their curiosity about the connection between the role of Blanche and Viven Leigh's insatiable sexual appetite and later descent into breakdown. They may also-for the first time-question whether the character of Blanche was actually "mad" or whether her anxiousness was symptomatic of another disorder. "A Streetcar Named Desire" is one of the most haunting and most-studied modern plays. Staggs' new book will fascinate fans and richen newcomers' understanding of its importance in American theater and movie history.

(Vocal Score). This wonderful new American opera, based on the unforgettable Tennessee Williams play, has been broadcast around the world and recorded live on Deutsche Grammaphon, and it's been a big hit ever since its premiere last year at the San Francisco Opera. Libretto by Philip Littell. Instrumental parts available for rental.

Nicholas Grene explores the subject of domestic spaces in modern drama through close readings of nine major plays.