Broadway, Seriously. Crash Course Theater #7

Modern American Drama
Broadway, Seriously. Crash Course Theater #7

Broadway
- By mid-century Broadway had become a home for serious plays
- But eventually it was losing out to movies and television a bunch of theater had
closed – they had to try stg
o what they tried was a kind of realism influenced by modernist structures and
styles
- THOMAS LANIER WILLIAMS

o ‘Tennessee’
o Born in: Mississippi, 1911
o Grew up (unhappily): St. Louis, Missouri
o Worked as a stock boy at a shoe company + wrote for local theater troupes
o 1944: 1st big success – The Glass Menagerie
 semi-autobiographical memory play
 main character: Tom – who steps in and out of the action
 other characters were modeled by his mother + sister
 typical American family drama
BUT
reaches behind realism to stg more poetic & abstract
o in his production notes: “a new plastic theater which must take the place of
the exhausted theater of realistic conventions if the theater is to resume
vitality as a part of our culture”
 this theater is a somewhat unrealistic + and trying to get in touch with
the passion and myth that underlies reality
 little like: symbolism + expressionism
o His greatest work: A streetcar named Desire

 1947: opened on Broadway
 Won: the Pulitzer Prize
 Ran for: 855 performances
 Story: it’s at New Orleans in the home of Stanley and Stella Kowalski.
At the beginning of the play Stella’s sister, Blanche arrives for a visit under mysterious
circumstances. She and Stanley dislike each other immediately. She thinks that Stanley – a
working-class guy who likes beer and poker games – is a brute and he thinks that Blanche,
who takes long baths and throws scarves over lamps in an effort to create a kind of magic, is
a phony. They’ve both got their points and Williams has sympathy for both of them. Blanche
is a broken woman clinging desperately to her illusions and while Stanley may be brutish, he
has moments of longing and pathos too.
“through these characters, the play charts collisions between illusion

and reality, dream and violent awakening, and mew and old ideas of
what it means to be American”
 It was a hit on Broadway + at the movies
 Method acting: American corruption if Stanislavski and actor training –
it valorized emotional truth over craft boring thing (e.g. posture,
diction)
 Marlon Brando ~ as Stanley Kowalski in the play and in the movie
 Director of movie: Elia Kazan
o Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1979, four
years before his death
- ARTHUR MILLER
o Great serious play writer
o Born in: Manhattan, 1915
o He was an upper-middle class kid until the stock market crashed and his
father’s business failed a play was written about it: The price
o He was a semi-autobiographical writer like Eugene O’Neil and Williams Miller
o Helped to enshrine the family play as the major American style
o Style: blends realism + expressionism ~ his concerns are more pointedly
political & he’s way less interested in his female characters (unless they’re
witches)
o After high school he worked for several years until he’s saved up enough
money to attend the University of Michigan he began to write plays
o 1944: The man who had all the luck – landed on Broadway with this (– the
same year as Williams ) it flopped (szar volt)
o 1947: All my sons – successful
o 1949: Death of a salesman
 His big deal play
 Ran for: 742 performances
 Won: Pulitzer Prize
 It is a tragedy centered on Willy Loman – the unsuccessful salesman of
the title
 Miller said he wrote the paly to:
“cut through time like a knife through a layer of cake or a road
thorough a mountain revealing its geologic layers, and instead of one
incident in one timeframe succeeding another, display past and
present concurrently”
 His initial set design idea was to have the set housed inside a giant
skull
 The play combines a realistic family drama with a more expressionist
style to show the corrupting influence of the American Dream
 Story: it takes place in 24 hours + flashbacks
When it opens Willy Loman has just returned unsuccessful & exhausted from a sales trip. His
wife, Linda wants him to ask his boss Howard, if Willy can stop traveling but Willy is
reluctant. Later that day Linda tells her son’s Biff and Happy that Willy has tried to kill
himself. To cheer Willy up the boys tell that they’re going to go into business together. Biff is
a dropout & kleptomaniac and Happy is a womanizer & weakling. Willy still believes that
both his boys can be successful – which is all that matters to Willy. There’s a flashback to
happier days when Biff was a high school football star and there’s a more ambivalent
flashback which shows Willy with his mistress. Willy also has a vision of his older brother,
Ben who left Brooklyn first for Africa then Alaska and became rich. Willy has always
regretted not joining him. Willy gets fired from his job. Biff never gets to make his business
proposal and during what’s supposed to be a celebratory dinner Biff tries to tell his father
the truth and Willy flashes back to the time Biff caught him with his mistress; a trauma that
led Biff to give up on summer school and his hopes for an athletic scholarship. Biff and Happy
leave the restaurant deserting their father. Later that night Biff again tries to confess but
Willy won’t hear him instead he has a vision of his brother, Ben. Willy is convinced that the
best way to support his family is by killing himself allowing his family to collect the insurance
money. We hear him drive away and the final scene finds the family at his funeral with Linda
revealing that she has made the final payment on the mortgage. “We’re free and clear” –
she tells her dead husband – “we’re free, we’re free”
 It illustrates Miller’s arguments that the common man is as act a

subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were
 With shifts in time and emphasis on the tension between illusion and
reality, comforting lies and cold truth Salesman lays bare the
American myth ~ a good life is a commercially + financially successful
one
Willy is so wedded to this vision that he can’t see himself / his family
clearly
 Miller also insists that everyone, even a man as misguided as Willy is a
creature of dignity who deserves our respect
- LORRAINE HANSBERRY
o Born in: Chicago, 1932
o Middle-class, politically active parents
o During her childhood the family attempted to move to a white neighborhood
and were met with violent racism
o Introduced to theater: in high school + at the University of Wisconsin  she
worked as a journalist and activist before turning to playwriting
o 1957: A raisin in the sun
 Loosely inspired by her family and the discrimination that they faced
 1959: opened on Broadway
 James Baldwin: “never before the entire history of the American
theater has so much of the truth if black people’s lives been seen on
the stage”
 Hansberry was African-American , like Williams who was gay and Mille
who was Jewish, she was able to write about American society from
the position of someone who was both inside & outside of it
 The play is a specific realistic portrait of a multi-generational urban
black family and + a more general consideration of what it means to
live in a world that doesn’t always want or value you
***
All of the main characters of the 3 play writers are trying to find their way in a world that
doesn’t necessarily have a place for them
 Takes its title from Langston Hugh’s poem about dreams deferred
centers on the younger family
They live on Chicago’s south side in a roach-filled apartment. They’re about to receive an
insurance policy payout of 10 thousand dollars – enough to substantially improve their lives.
Mama – the grandmother – wants to buy a house in a better neighborhood while her son,
Walter, wants to invest in a liquor store and her daughter, Benny wants to use the money for
medical school. When Walter’s wife becomes pregnant and worries that the family can’t
afford another child Mama buys a house in an all-white neighborhood. A homeowner tries to
buy her out but Mama holds firm even after Walter loses the rest of his money to a
scheming friend. As the play ends the youngers are leaving their home, on the way they
hope to a better life.
 The play won a drama critics circle award, was turned into a movie for
Columbia Pictures, and continues to be widely performed
- Just when it seems like Broadway has become a place for serious American drama, New York is gonna
open un a few more places, not on Broadway and it is going to call those places  Off Broadway

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Modern American Drama

Broadway, Seriously. Crash Course Theater #7

- THOMAS LANIER WILLIAMS

o His greatest work: A streetcar named Desire

“through these characters, the play charts collisions between illusion

 Story: it takes place in 24 hours + flashbacks

 It illustrates Miller’s arguments that the common man is as act a

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