Symbolic Elements in Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams
The most striking feature of Tennessee Williams Summer and Smoke as performed at the Guthrie Theater was the transformation of the characters. There are several elements that reflect this transformation. These elements are set, costumes and character mannerisms, which are all symbolic. As a result of these complexities, the audience is exposed to a very deep and meaningful production. Summer and Smoke illustrates the transformation of the human mind and body through eloquent symbolic subtleties that are present through out the play.
The set is a powerful tool in the hands of it's designer. The feel of a set to the audience and the characters is an important facet of making a production successful. The choice of furniture style and décor can help the audience get a feel for the characters that are portrayed as using this furniture. A person with a rough-cut personality is usually portrayed with rough furniture. On the other hand, a softhearted character is portrayed with furniture that relays his/her softness.
In the production, the choice of furniture styles and décor in Alma's house and John's house indicate that these two characters are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Alma's furnishings consist of velvet cloth furniture, which is a soft, nurturing material, that symbolizes her child like naivete and her family's good heartedness. On the other hand, the doctor's furniture in the first half of the play, is pale yellow wood furniture. This choice seems to scream at me that the characters that are being portrayed with this particular set are inanimate and cold just like the wood. The pale yellow color in the furniture hints at the fact that a particular...
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...ner wild side was also let loose. All these changes intend to show us that she has lost all hope and gone to a more defiant and less respectable route. John, On the other hand, is now sporting a black, more conservatively cut suite. It is also painstakingly obvious that he has abandoned his renegade ways, and has now become a more responsible and respectable man.
Character transformation is evident in the Guthrie Theater's production of Summer and Smoke. The set, costumes, and character mannerisms are all symbolic elements, which reflect these transformations. If picked up and understood these symbolic elements add more depth and meaning to the production. These transformations improved the production and made it more interesting by hinting at the minute and otherwise unnoticeable subtleties in the characters and their actions.
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"Sweat" by Zora Neale Hurston is filled with symbolism ranging from images that are easily captured to things that require a little bit more insight. Religion has apparently played a major role in Hurston's life, readily seen in "Sweat" with the references to a snake and Gethsemane. Symbolism plays a big part of this story and after analyzing these, they give the story a deeper meaning and can enlighten the reader as to the full meaning of "Sweat".
Literary theorist, Kenneth Burke, defined dramatistic explaination by the prescence of five key elements. This list of elements, now popularly known as Burke’s Pentad, can be used to asses human behavior as well as dicipher literary themes and motives. The five elements; agent, purpose, scene, act, and agency, have been found highly useful by performance study practitioners in translating texts into aesthetics. When systematically applying Burke’s Pentad to “Burn Your Maps,” a short story by Robyn Joy Leff published January 2002 of the Atlantic Monthly, the analyzer can realistically grasp the emotional and logical motivations and tones of the text. By doing so, the performer becomes an enlightened vessel for the message Leff wants to communicate. The Pentad can be described with simple questions like: Who? What? When? Where? How?, but asking the small questions should always lead to more in depth analysis of the element, and it should overall, explain the deeper question: Why?
The opening scenes of the movie focus on the narrator, the epitome of a consumerist. He asserts, “Like everyone else, I had become a slave to the IKEA nesting instinct…I would flip through catalogues and wonder ‘what kind of dining set defines me as a person?’” His IKEA fetish is the outcome of his unfound identity. He purchases these goods not because he needs them, but because it is represented as the optimum apartment for a single man in catalogues.
Due the time frame when Stewart was writing the play, which is during the Second World War, he effectively positions the audience to sympathize with the tragic death of the heroes in the play by reinforcing the main discourses of both personal and national sacrifices of ordinary men. Many dramatic techniques were used to enhance the audience’s awareness of the struggles that the men had been through. One of the major techniques is Stewart’ positioning of the audience involved the use of lyric verse to assist the audience to create the visual and auditory imagery and to feel the harsh atmosphere that the play has created; and also through some technical devices such as the metaphors, similes, alliteration, assonance, repetition and rhyme within the verses, as found in the texts of the Announcer. Stewart has successfully used these techniques to reflect the feelings deep inside the men’s struggle of physical difficulties against the nature of freezing snows and blizzards; emotional struggle of depression, pressure and disappointment; and Stewart symbolizes “The Fire On The Snow” as “man against snow, the spirit of man against all that conspires to defeat him”.
The masterful use of symbolism is delightfully ubiquitous in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” He uses a collection of dim, dark and shadowy symbols that constantly remind the audience of the lost opportunity each of these three characters continually experience. This symbolism is not only use to enlighten the audience to their neglected opportunities to shine, but it is also repeatedly utilized to reinforce the ways in which the characters try in vain to cross over turbulent waters into a world of light and clarity. It is thematically a wrenching story of life gone by, and the barren attempts to realize another reality that is made more poignant by symbolic language, objects, setting, lighting and music. The characters are trying to escape their own reality, and continue desperately to grasp at real life. The powerful use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie exaggerates their missed opportunities, and their inability to step into a new reality. Through the use of symbolism, Williams continually illuminates the attempts of each character to break their bondage, and cross their own personal Rubicon into another reality. Because of his expert use of symbolism the audience can assuredly feel the full weight and impact of their imprisonment and actions.
These personifications and imagery brings the house to life as it makes you feel and see things much
A sense of foreboding is created right from the start of the play. In the opening stage directions the furniture is described as “heavily comfortable” but not “cosy and homelike”. My thoughts are that these descriptions represent the family’s relationships with one another, in the sense that their celebration with each other is more ostentatious opposed to genuine jubilance. This hints to the audience that everything is not as jovial as it seems and makes them aware of a tensi...
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
Like many fiction novels, plays have also been a big part of literature and have been around for not only decades but also centuries. Plays tell a story, a story that a reader could then see with their own eyes. Plays not only entertain a viewer’s eyes, but plays can also entertain a viewer’s mind and make them think critically. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s play Into the Woods is an example of this. If a reader or viewer were to reader or view Into the Woods in a critical way, they might be able to view it in a performance studies way. A viewer could consider the text in relation to their aspects of performance, or any kind of analysis that focuses mainly on the study of performance (Alton, Performance, 1). This theory is perfect for Into the Woods and many other plays because they are text that then are created into a physical performance.
From the scene set up to the clothes each actor wore it was all very impressing. The scene set up was a beauty shop and was extremely accurate and realistic. The play had four scenes and each scene was a different season. For each season the “beauty shop” was filled with props. In December it was filled with Christmas trees and ornaments. The clothes each actor wore fit each character’s personality. For example, Annelle was seen as very quirky and always would wear “dorky” clothes. The use of spectacle in this play left no room for imagination because they had everything layer out for
Before watching the play, “Vanya, Sonia, Masha, and Spike”, I have never watched an American play. Whenever I would revealed this information to people, they would give me a strange look which makes me feel so uncomfortable. I always wondered what exactly the plays would look like or what messages are they delivering to general audience? The curiosity about plays lead me to take the drama class. On the day of the show, I was very nervous since I wasn’t sure about my responsibility as a part of general audience or what should I have expected from actors of the show? In this paper, dramatic and production elements such as characterization, theme, rising action, costume design, light design, and scenic design will be analyzed.
Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” is a controversial play focusing on the marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer. The play is filled with symbols that represent abstract ideas and concepts. These symbols effectively illustrate the inner conflicts that are going on between the characters. Henrik Ibsen’s use of symbolism such as the Christmas tree, the locked mailbox, the Tarantella, Dr. Rank’s calling cards, and the letters allows him to give a powerful portrayal to symbolize aspects of characters and their relationship to each other.
Mark Thompson’s set is a mechanical marvel with scrupulous attention to detail. The front of the set displays the stage for “Nothing On”, a delightful country house converted from 16th century posset mill, replete with paintings, doyleys and Persian carpets. Combined with the gentle almost glowing yellow lighting (Nigel Levings), reminiscent of candles and oil lanterns, the opening scenes look comically anachronistic, a caricature of a traditional 20th century British living room. The set is then taken a step further when it is spun 180 degrees for act two, showing the backstage of “Nothing on”, completely bare of frivolities it is the antithesis of the original set, de...
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In 1944, Tennessee Williams shaped the way of theatre by creating his own original genre. With his script of The Glass Menagerie, Williams was able to create a memory play: the first of its kind. WIlliams’ creation offered a new experience of a man, Tom, reminiscing on his past. While Tom was present for most of the memories, some events did not involve Tom, so he had to imagine what was actually happening during that time. This style of play allows readers and viewers to see true memories, but there also might be some warped perceptions. Tom recalls the time of his sister, Laura, trying to find a suitor. Her timid nature and slight impairment aid to her mother’s constant persistence over getting married. Throughout the years, many producers