"Plastic Theater" In Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie And A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams is one of the greatest American playwrights. His "psychological realism" and "plastic theater" reinvent the postwar American theater.The thesis conducts a detailed study of the "plastic" devices employed in Tennessee Williams' most important plays: The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Its aim is to examine how Tennessee Williams puts into practice his idea of "plastic theater" in the two plays and to prove that from The Glass Menagerie to A Streetcar Named Desire the playwright's dramaturgy gradually becomes mature. In this process, the author gets a better understanding of the two plays and the concept "plastic theater."Drama is not only an art of words but also an art of performance. Tennessee Williams employs different theatrical devices to achieve a strong stage effect. However, different from the realistic dramatists who try to represent the outside world objectively on the stage, Tennessee Williams applies expressionistically and symbolically such theatrical techniques as special setting, lighting, costume, and sound, etc, to establish mood and externalize the inner world of his characters. Since the American theater before Tennessee Williams is dominated by realistic drama, Williams' proposal and practice of a "plastic theater" break a new ground for then the exhausted American drama.Apart from the stage effects mentioned above, Tennessee Williams also uses symbolic names and symbolic events in his plays, which help indicate the contents and the inner life of his characters. Another important feature of Tennessee Williams' plastic theater is his poetic language. Concise, refined, and full of poetic images, his language also accords with the characters' personality, identity and background. Through an analysis of the characters' language, a better picture of the characters' psychology is obtained.In this thesis, the author first gives a brief survey of American drama in Chapter One to show Williams' position in American theater. Meanwhile, in the same chapter, the author introduces the concept of "plastic theater," which is the theoretical foundation of the thesis. Then in Chapter Two and Chapter Three, the author makes a detailed analysis of the plastic devices employed in the two plays, including visual, aural, and other devices such as symbolic names, etc. In the analysis, the author also makes a comparison between the two plays to give evidence to the statement that A Streetcar Named Desire is much better than The Glass Menagerie in its use of plastic form.Finally, a conclusion is drawn that Tennessee Williams carries out his idea of "plastic theater" in his most famous plays The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire which also make him one of the greatest American playwrights. Moreover, Tennessee Williams handled the plastic techniques far more skillfully in A Streetcar Named Desire than in The Glass Menagerie.