a book
A Streetcar Named Desire
Tennessee Williams · 1947 · 142 pages
This 1947 play by Tennessee Williams won the Pulitizer Prize for drama in 1948. "It created an immortal woman in the character of Blanche DuBois, the haggard and fragile southern beauty whose pathetic last gasp at happiness is cruelly destroyed [by] Stanley Kowalski ... the crudely sensual brother-in-law who precipitated Blanche's tragedy."--Back cover.
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Kathy Bates
“Of all of Tennessee Williams’s characters, those in Streetcar move me the most. I first read the play in high school while looking for monologues to perform at theater contests. Many years later, I studied with the great director José Quintero, who pointed out that when Stanley enters, he tosses his wife, Stella, a bloody package of meat. Right away that’s Williams telling you theirs is a primitive relationship. Blanche, on the other hand, uses illusion to escape the realities of aging and death—’the long parade to the graveyard!’ She says, ‘I don’t want realism. I want magic!’ My favorite line is in the scene in which Mitch embraces and kisses her. Blanche looks at him and says, ‘Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!’ She believes she will be saved at last.”↗