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Glass Menagerie
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The Glass Menagerie is a play by Tennessee Williams. The play premiered in Chicago in 1944, and in 1945 won the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The Glass Menagerie was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights. The Glass Menagerie is accounted by many to be a biographical play about Williams life, the characters and story mimicking his own more closely than any of his other works. Williams would be Tom, his Mother, Amanda, and his sickly and disturbed sister Rose would be Laura.
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The Glass Menagerie was Williams’ first critical success when it opened in Chicago in 1944 and premiered on Broadway in 1945. Following its Broadway premiere, the play won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle and was revived on Broadway in 1965 and again in 1983.
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Since its first tryout production in Chicago in 1944, Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" has had a unique place in American theater. Williams called it a "memory play," a poetically inspired, semiautobiographical account of his early days in 1930s St. Louis. At the Colony Theatre, it's a poignant and stunning revival.
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Through its poetic structure and reliance on stage technology, The Glass Menagerie has had a significant impact on later twentieth century drama. Tom serves as both narrator and character, dissolving the present into the past; Williams signals this by exploiting lighting and sound, especially music — technologies which were less available to earlier playwrights. In this sense, the themes of the play are inseparable from its production values.
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The play The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, Williams uses many symbols which represent many different things. Many of the symbols used in the play try to symbolize some form of escape or difference between reality and illusion. The first symbol, presented in the first scene, is the fire escape. This represents the "bridge" between the illusory world of the Wingfields and the world of reality. This "bridge" seems to be a one way passage. But the direction varies for each character.
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The Glass Menagerie premiered on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre in 1945. Directed by Eddie Dowling and Margo Jones, the original production featured Laurette Taylor as Amanda, Eddie Dowling as Tom, Julie Haydon as Laura and Anthony Ross as Jim. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts presented the Tennessee Williams play in summer 2004 starring Sally Field as Amanda.
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