Tennessee Williams:

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE

Directed by: Lenka Udovički

Co-production of Ulysses Theatre, Belgrade Drama Theatre and BELEF Festival

A Streetcar Named Desire is a dramatic work that literary factography classified as a classic almost at the very moment of its creation, thus probably making its topicality, at that time, timeless and recognisable even here and today.

Tennessee Williams is a writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for this play in 1948, the first of three. Directed by Elia Kazan, the success in the theatre was exceptional, and a few years later she also directed a cult film based on the piece.

While driving our Streetcar, Williams speaks loudly about the topics that troubled him, about the weaknesses that were an integral part of his existence: mental lability, homosexuality, alcoholism. And it was precisely this persistence, inherited from Chekhov, that allowed the specificity, if chosen and described by the master’s pen, to become a common place and our common problem. Therefore, relying on revealing the state of the human soul, the intimate drama of its heroes, their emotional turmoil – make it relevant for all times, including ours.

In this Streetcar, some very important contemporary questions are also problematised, questions that concern the position of women in modern society. Williams, if he were our actual contemporary, not just a literary contemporary, would be a well-known and recognised advocate of women’s emancipation. Namely, very clearly and unequivocally in the middle of the last century with this text, he opened the question: can a woman survive in the world of extreme materialism, in the almost hysterical circumstances that grind our lives. Blanche says: “Deliberate cruelty cannot be forgiven.” And our world, unfortunately, has become even more cruel.

But apart from the courage to speak about the forbidden, apart from the ability to make us recognise the problems of the characters who selflessly share it with us, he talks about the moment when one time passes forever and disappears, and another, new one, comes. At that time of the revolution, Williams wrote about the demise of one class (Blanche) and the creation of a new one (Stanley), about those who manage to transfer and survive (Stella), about the establishment of a new order of values.

Today, we are also very aware of the change, as history always skillfully takes care of, caught us unprepared and in these chaotic circumstances, our timetable turns into panic and disorder. The clash of the old and the new can be read first and foremost as a clash of two worldviews.

Do we have the right to believe that illusion can be an integral part of life, that there is still room for love in this world that renounces, shames emotions. Our illusions are broken, the need to “escape from a reality in which we don’t feel comfortable” is thwarted.

And as the writer says: “People get over it easier if you take away their money, rather than illusions.”

Željka Udovičič Pleština