Bang the Drums and Sound the Horns!

Joyous time is just upon us! The time of the local productions I have been waiting all "season" to see - Picnic by William Inge at Live Theatre Workshop, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at Arizona Theatre Company, The Trip to Bountiful by Horton Foote at Waypointe Theatre and Othello by William Shakespeare at Rogue Theatre. I can't wait!

[And oh yea, I just want to mention, Steve Anderson...best among the best (in my opinion) is directing Flaming Guns of the Purple Sage...at Beowulf Alley Theatre. I'm just throwing that in there...flaming guns of the purple sage...Steve Anderson...great director...Beowulf...flaming guns...]

Anyway, just to kick of those first plays I mentioned, here is a excerpt from a preview article in the Star regarding Glass Menagerie.

There's nothing like getting some direction from the dead.
"Being a memory play, 'The Glass Menagerie' can be presented with unusual freedom of convention," Tennessee Williams, who died in 1983, wrote in his introduction to the play.
The words were like a great ringing of the Liberty Bell for Juliette Carrillo, director of the Arizona Theatre Company production opening in previews Saturday.
"That was really freeing," she said in a recent phone conversation before a rehearsal. "I tend to make choices that are not realistic."

O.K., my question, reaction to that is "what does that mean?" Read the entire article and go see the play...but in the meantime, here is another excerpt

"What I'm doing in the conceptual approach to this play is I'm investigating how we lose ourselves in the world of fantasy as a means of escape," Carrillo said.
"I'm literally dissecting that process, turning it upside down and looking at it. I don't think I'm judging it; I'm just examining it in a new way."

My thoughts: Don't we all know that Americans lose themselves daily, almost all day long in some sort of vicarious experience or fantasy or virtual reality and the acting out of personas? Do we need to examine that process in detail? Or do we need, as Tennessee intended, for us to see the absolute truth and reality of our daily situations? Don't we need to have those fantasies obliterated? and reality revealed? As happens in the play?

And what of that notion Tennessee mentions about the play being presented with unusual freedom of convention? That does not mean an escape or change from realism or reality, into the so-called "theatrical" or unreal, but rather it means throw off the disguises, those things, those conventions that hide reality, the false scenery, etc, and get to the literal, the literal, thoughts, feelings and actions of the characters. The simple but oh so difficult, "o.k., this is who and what I am and who and what you are - now let's deal with it."

This could be a case of the director mimicking our lives of hiding and playing in fantasy, avoiding what's actually there - trying to outsmart and over think, over conceptualize the play. It remains to be seen what reaches the stage.

Whatever the answers are, here's looking forward to the production!