The Glass Menagerie Sept 14 – Oct 27 Wurtele Thrust Stage WELCOME

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The Call Is Places 2019–2020 SUBSCRIBER NEWSLETTER

From Artistic Director Joseph Haj SEASON 2019–2020 2019–2020

The Glass Menagerie Sept 14 – Oct 27, 2019 Dear Friends, Wurtele Thrust Stage Welcome to the Guthrie’s 2019–2020 Season! After months of planning Steel Magnolias and discussion, I’m deeply proud of the plays and creative teams we’ve Oct 26 – Dec 15, 2019 assembled. Curating an ambitious slate of classics and new works that McGuire Proscenium Stage explore the rites of passage and inescapable realities of the human experience has been a great pleasure, and I am thrilled to share the A Christmas Carol season with you. Nov 12 – Dec 29, 2019 Wurtele Thrust Stage Tennessee Williams, inarguably one of the greatest American playwrights, wrote a masterful portrayal of family in The Glass Menagerie — his first Noura major success — and mapped the great, unknowable distances between Jan 11 – Feb 16, 2020 McGuire Proscenium Stage people, especially those we love most and should know best. His semiautobiographical drama coined the term “memory play” and moved Twelfth Night American theater into bold, uncharted territory. The story hovers inside Feb 8 – March 22, 2020 Tom Wingfield’s fragmented memory as he wrestles with the ghosts of Wurtele Thrust Stage his past, allowing Williams to examine the very notion of memory: What do we choose to remember? What, despite our best efforts, do we find The Bacchae impossible to forget? Can our memories be trusted? And do they harm, Feb 29 – April 5, 2020 help or heal us? McGuire Proscenium Stage The Glass Menagerie’s themes are the forever themes: love, family, Emma loneliness, guilt, forgiveness. The Wingfield family and their gentleman April 11 – May 31, 2020 caller encounter and grapple with them in such visceral ways that you will Wurtele Thrust Stage undoubtedly recognize bits and pieces of yourself in each character — a telltale sign of Williams’ mastery. I am honored to helm this production Destiny of Desire with a cast and creative team who have demonstrated an astounding May 30 – July 11, 2020 ability to bring the play’s words and ideas to vivid, poetic and brilliant life. McGuire Proscenium Stage

Thank you for joining us at the top of our new season, and I hope you’ll Cabaret return to the Guthrie for more stories, old and new, that illuminate our June 20 – Aug 23, 2020 Wurtele Thrust Stage common humanity.

Sweat Yours, July 25 – Aug 29, 2020 McGuire Proscenium Stage

Visit guthrietheater.org for additional productions and play descriptions.

2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PHOTO: T CHARLES ERICKSON The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

The Guthrie gratefully recognizes Mary W. Vaughan as Leading Producer Cast and Louise W. Otten and Peter & in alphabetical order Patricia Kitchak as Producers.

TOM WINGFIELD Remy Auberjonois* Setting LAURA WINGFIELD Carey Cox* An apartment and alley in St. Louis. The near and distant past. JIM O’CONNOR Grayson DeJesus*

AMANDA WINGFIELD Jennifer Van Dyck* Run Time Approximately 2 hours, 25 minutes (including intermission)

Understudies Kate Berg (Laura Wingfield), John Catron* (Tom Wingfield/ Creative Team Jim O’Connor), Michelle O’Neill* (Amanda Wingfield) DIRECTOR Joseph Haj Understudies never substitute for performers unless announced prior to the performance. SCENIC DESIGNER Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams

COSTUME DESIGNER Raquel Barreto Acknowledgments The Glass Menagerie is presented LIGHTING DESIGNER Christopher Akerlind by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc., a Concord Theatricals SOUND DESIGNER Darron L West Company. On behalf of The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. COMPOSER Jack Herrick

MOVEMENT DIRECTOR Maija García

DRAMATURG Carla Steen

RESIDENT VOICE COACH Jill Walmsley Zager

STAGE MANAGER Timothy Markus*

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER Kathryn Sam Houkom*

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Tracey Maloney

NYC CASTING CONSULTANT McCorkle Casting, Ltd.

DESIGN ASSISTANTS Ryan Connealy (lighting) Lisa Jones (costumes) Reid Rejsa (sound)

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association

3 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY

Synopsis

Tom Wingfield conjures from “Glass breaks so easily. memory his family’s life in their No matter how careful you are.” St. Louis tenement apartment during the depths of the – Laura to Jim in The Glass Menagerie Depression. He holds a dead- end job at a shoe warehouse CHARACTERS (as described by Tennessee Williams) while nursing dreams of being a writer. His older sister Amanda Wingfield, the mother Laura has retreated from A woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another life’s harsher realities to live time and place. Her characterization must be carefully created, not in a world of old records and copied from type. She is not paranoiac, but her life is paranoia. There is glass figurines. Their mother much to admire in Amanda and as much to love and pity as there is to Amanda retains hope that her laugh at. Certainly she has endurance and a kind of heroism, and though children will thrive in a world her foolishness makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there is tenderness that doesn’t appear to have in her slight person. a place for them. Tension in the tiny apartment mounts as Laura Wingfield, her daughter Tom grows restless and chafes Amanda, having failed to establish contact with reality, continues to live under Amanda’s vigilant vitally in her illusions, but Laura’s situation is even graver. A childhood attention. The arrival of Jim, illness has left her crippled, one leg slightly shorter than the other and a gentleman caller for Laura, held in a brace. This defect need not be more than suggested on the could be a door opening for stage. Stemming from this, Laura’s separation increases until she is all of them or a disturbance like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move that finally shatters their from the shelf. fragile home. Tom Wingfield, her son SETTING The narrator of the play and a poet with a job in a warehouse. His nature An apartment and alley is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap, he has to act without pity. in St. Louis. The near and distant past. Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller A nice, ordinary young man.

4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PHOTOS: REMY AUBERJONOIS AND JENNIFER VAN DYCK; GRAYSON DeJESUS AND CAREY COX; JOSEPH HAJ (DAN NORMAN) THE PLAYWRIGHT

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier (“Tennessee”) Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911. His mother, Edwina Dakin Williams, was born in Ohio and imagined herself to be a Southern belle. His father, Cornelius Coffin (C.C.) Williams, was a rough man with a fine Southern pedigree. The family included his older sister, Rose, and his younger brother, Dakin. C.C. was absent for long periods throughout their childhood and moved the family from town to town. Williams was a sickly child and Edwina insisted that he focus on Shakespeare rather than sports, which fostered his interest in literature and, eventually, writing.

The family moved from Clarksdale, of verse in a Greenwich Village later work. Menagerie shows his Mississippi, to St. Louis, Missouri, nightclub. While working these odd sympathetic insight into female in 1918. Although Williams wanted jobs, Williams was writing furiously, psychology, which is distinctive of to be a writer, his father forced him mostly for the stage. Williams’ dramas. to quit the University of Missouri and work in a shoe factory. He Williams’ work is best approached He won a Pulitzer Prize for finally received his B.A. in 1938 through his three most successful Streetcar, in which Blanche from the University of Iowa. After plays: The Glass Menagerie DuBois is driven mad by her brutal graduation, he worked as a bellhop (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans, a handyman in a (1947) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof whom Williams modeled after a co- shoe warehouse, a teletypist with a (1955). The first has a lyrical, sad worker from his shoe factory days. corps of engineers in Jacksonville, gentleness that separates it from The heroine is more ambivalently Florida, and a writer and reciter the savage cruelty of much of his presented as partly the architect

5 \ GUTHRIE THEATER “We get people home; we let them know that we’re here for them. This is what art can do. Art should be the arm and the shoulder and the kind eyes — all of which let others know you deserve to live and to be loved.”

– Tennessee Williams, on what he hoped his writing would accomplish

of her own destruction. Living After Cat, which earned Williams writing about gay people.” As dangerously near the edge of his second Pulitzer Prize, he is often the case with Williams, sanity and dependent on “the concentrated more on loners his statement is both true and kindness of strangers,” Blanche than family, and the Southern untrue — his great midcareer plays is the first in a line of characters decadence that earned Streetcar focus on relationships rather than who protected themselves its initial notoriety became more politics, but the figure of the gay by “mendacity.” sensationally sinister. Sexual and male appears in his characters other forms of perversity were both explicitly (Charlus in Camino Before the success of Cat came prominent, including cannibalism Real) and implicitly (Brick in Cat) three less successful works. in Suddenly Last Summer (1958) throughout his works. Summer and Smoke (1947) has and castration in Sweet Bird of problems engaging a complete Youth (1959). What Williams once In 1943, Williams’ mother sympathy for, and comprehension identified as “the passion for authorized a frontal lobotomy of, its small-town misfits.The declivity” in human nature became on his sister, Rose, and Williams Rose Tattoo (1951), a turbulently paramount. Yet his obsession cared for Rose for the rest of her melodramatic celebration of the with cruelty, loneliness, depravity, life. In New Orleans in 1947, he met sexual vigor of Sicilian immigrants, desperation and death in these Frank Merlo, a former sailor in the has at least the dramatic plays is often Jacobean in intensity U.S. Navy, who became Williams’ robustness to give it a theatrical and dramatic energy. companion until Merlo died of vitality. Camino Real (1953), which lung cancer in 1961. Williams was Williams thought to be his greatest Throughout his writing career, depressed for much of the rest of achievement but flopped on Williams nurtured a public persona his life and became addicted to Broadway, sustained his reputation that gradually shifted from shy to prescription drugs and alcohol. for imaginatively exploring the flamboyantly homosexual in an era In 1969, his brother placed him in possibilities of dramatic idioms, reluctant to accept gay men. His a St. Louis psychiatric institution but its expressionism, labored fears of audience backlash against where Williams suffered two symbolism, lack of realism his personal life progressively massive heart attacks before being and romanticism of loneliness proved groundless. Even late in released. He died in New York City bewildered or alienated audiences. life, Williams was reluctant to on February 25, 1983. embrace a political agenda. In Williams’ most vivid excursion into 1976, Gay Sunshine magazine A compulsive writer, Williams the tensions of family life came declared that the playwright wrote more than 100 poems, with Cat, which is tightly and had never dealt openly with the more than 60 short stories, at more conventionally constructed, politics of gay liberation, to which least 25 full-length plays, many displaying a lively, if bitter, sense of Williams immediately responded, short plays, two novels (The humor and a powerful vitality. The “People so wish to latch onto Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and attention of high school football something didactic; I do not deal Moise and the World of Reason) hero Brick to his deceased buddy, with the didactic, ever. … I wish to and a memoir (Memoirs), from Skipper, poisons his relationship have a broad audience because which his personality emerges with his wife, Maggie (the cat), the major thrust of my work is as more ebullient than the and his self-aggrandizing father, not sexual orientation, it’s social. blackness of his plays might lead Big Daddy. I’m not about to limit myself to one to expect.

Sourced and edited from several biographies, including Penguin Random House, St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America and International Dictionary of the Theatre

6 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PLAY FEATURE

Tom Is Tom

By Carla Steen Dramaturg

“I’m very personal as a writer, yes. I don’t mean to be, I just am.

Unavoidably.” Williams in the early 1940s – Tennessee Williams, in an interview with David Frost, 1970

When pressed by interviewer David Group Theatre contest, he adopted clothes as he fell off to sleep at Frost, Tennessee Williams named the pen name “Tennessee” to heaven knows what hour.” Williams Camino Real his most personal honor his father’s roots in the state left the shoe company only after play, as it was an expression of his and mask his identity. he broke down from exhaustion. own philosophy. Almost anyone else would likely choose The Glass Williams had developed a Rose Williams was a looming Menagerie because it is one of his passion for writing as a child and presence in her brother’s life. She most autobiographical works. pursued the craft at the University had a thin, fragile appearance of Missouri. When C.C. was and suffered from stomach Born Thomas Lanier Williams in disappointed in Williams’ grades, trouble; in her late teens, she was Mississippi in 1911 to Edwina and he forced Williams to quit school diagnosed with schizophrenia C.C. Williams, he arrived as a and work as a clerk-typist at the and had difficulty holding a job. younger brother to their daughter, shoe company, a job he held for In 1937, Rose was admitted to the Rose. A second brother, Dakin, almost three years. Edwina recalled Farmington State Hospital, and was born after the family moved in her memoir, Remember Me to six years later, she underwent a to St. Louis when Tom was 7. The Tom, that Williams persevered prefrontal lobotomy as treatment relocation was prompted by C.C. in his writing: “Every evening for her mental illness. By that time, taking a management job for the when he came home from the Williams’ writing allowed him to St. Louis-based International Shoe shoe company, Tom would go to travel, and he never forgave himself Company, and the Midwestern his room with black coffee and for being away from Rose. city became Williams’ home for cigarettes and I would hear the the next two decades. He loathed typewriter clicking away late at Williams found his footing as a St. Louis yet found permanent night in the silent house. Some writer by transforming his lived escape impossible until his success mornings when I walked in to experiences into fiction. As part as a playwright also brought his wake him for work, I would find writing exercise and part personal freedom. When he discovered he him sprawled fully dressed across exorcism, Williams wrote multiple was too old to submit work to a the bed, too tired to remove his iterations of his family narrative,

7 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PHOTO: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: MAD PILGRIMAGE OF THE FLESH BY JOHN LAHR “Every artist is born in jail and Tennessee Williams’ jail was called St. Louis. If you’re the creative type, the first thing you do when you’re born in jail is decorate your cell. The next thing you do is plan your breakout. Every major artist is full to bursting, looking for the mud and paint and music needed to execute an escape from the initial circumstances of his life. Some call this escape transcendence. When Tennessee decorated his cell, the play was entitled The Glass Menagerie.” Rose, Edwina and Tom – Playwright John Patrick Shanley, 2010

“I am back in St. Louis, writing furiously with seven wild-cats under my skin, as I realize that completing this new play is my only apparent avenue of escape. … My attack is purely emotional: under good direction could prove very effective but without it is in danger of spending itself in a lot of useless explosions. … My whole life has been a series of escapes, physical or psychological, more miraculous than any of Houdini’s, but I do at the present moment seem to be hanging by that one thread: obtaining a

Rose and fellowship and/or producing a successful play.” Tom in – Tennessee Williams, in a letter to Molly Day Thacher at Group Theatre, 1939 St. Louis

including the short story “Portrait it. The stage play ends in defeat — Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), both of a Girl in Glass” (1941) and the which she rejects at the very end honored with the Pulitzer Prize play The Gentleman Caller, which and prepares to continue beyond. for Drama, and wrote many other he adapted into a movie script The film story would have a softer remarkable plays that are well during his short-lived stint as a ending, I think.” loved within the American canon. writer for MGM Studios in 1943. Williams wrote to his agent, Audrey His family’s story found its most Aspects of Rose, Edwina and Wood, about his ideas for the film, complete and famous form in The Tom appear as shadows, glints saying that “the central and most Glass Menagerie, which premiered or glimmers in other characters interesting character is certainly in Chicago in 1944 before its from Williams’ work: Blanche Amanda, and in the writing, the Broadway opening in March 1945. DuBois, Brick Pollitt, Serafina Delle focus would be on her mainly. A The play’s success at first left Rose, Mrs. Venable and Catherine conventional woman, a little foolish him disoriented, an experience Holly. Yet these characters are and pathetic, but with an heroic he wrote about in the essay “The more abstracted and less directly fighting spirit concentrated blindly Catastrophe of Success.” When he connected to Williams’ own life. on trying to create a conventionally regained his traction, he produced It is in The Glass Menagerie alone successful adjustment for two two more masterpieces in A where Tennessee portrayed Tom children who are totally unfitted for Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and and Tom created Tennessee.

8 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PHOTOS: REMEMBER ME TO TOM BY EDWINA DAKIN WILLIAMS; TOM: THE UNKNOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS BY LYLE LEVERICH PLAY FEATURE

The Glass Menagerie at the Guthrie

Artistic Director Joseph Haj is directing Tennessee Williams’ lyrical masterpiece for the first time, but the Guthrie has produced this beloved play during four previous seasons. Enjoy this look back at our past productions, and be sure to peruse the program for personal memories from staff, artists and patrons.

DIRECTED BY ALAN SCHNEIDER • The Glass Menagerie was part of the Guthrie’s second season at Vineland Place along with Henry V, Volpone and Saint Joan. • Tickets were sold at the Box Office and two prominent downtown department stores: Dayton’s and Field-Schlick. • Actors Ed Flanders (Jim) and Ellen Geer (Laura) were married at the time. 1964 PHOTO: RUTH NELSON AND ED FLANDERS (MARTY NORDSTROM)

DIRECTED BY EMILY MANN • The role of Amanda was played by Barbara Bryne — a longtime Guthrie favorite who has performed on our stages for more than 40 years. • This production featured a six-person orchestra conducted by Dick Whitbeck, the Guthrie’s former musical director. • Actor Cara Duff-MacCormick (Laura) originated the role of Clare in Tennessee Williams’ Out Cry on Broadway in 1973. 1979 PHOTO: CARA DUFF-MacCORMICK AND BARBARA BRYNE (BOYD HAGEN)

DIRECTED BY VIVIAN MATALON • This production was part of the Guthrie’s 25th anniversary season, which also featured Frankenstein – Playing With Fire and Hamlet. • The Guthrie held pre-play symposiums throughout the season that were open to the public and previewed what was playing onstage. • Actor Polly Holliday (Amanda) is well known for playing the sassy waitress Flo on the 1970s sitcom “Alice” — a role that won her two Golden Globes. 1988 PHOTO: POLLY HOLLIDAY, TOM FERVOY, DAVID OSSIAN AND TRACY SALLOWS (MICHAL DANIEL)

DIRECTED BY JOE DOWLING • 2006–2007 was the inaugural season in our current building. • This production featured an unconventional concept of two Toms, who were played by Guthrie veteran Bill McCallum and “Queer as Folk” star Randy Harrison. • Two members of our 2019 creative team were part of this production. Assistant director Tracey Maloney played Laura and stage manager Timothy Markus worked as an intern. 2007 PHOTO: TRACEY MALONEY, HARRIET HARRIS AND RANDY HARRISON (T CHARLES ERICKSON)

9 \ GUTHRIE THEATER ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

A Poetic Memory Play

When The Glass Menagerie premiered on Broadway in 1945, it was an instant success that changed American theater forever. Watch the trailer for an inside look at the Guthrie’s take on this Tennessee Williams classic.

WATCH THE TRAILER

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