Amy Jo Jackson (31:09)
Yeah, I mean, so I've studied a lot with Larry Moss, the great acting teacher. And so I've seen the Amanda Lore scene and the, you know, the Gentleman Caller scene with Laura and the candelabra and everything on the floor, like, a zillion times in those classes. And a lot of what Larry, who studied with Stella Adler a lot, among other people, talks about is how much, like, he was writing about these women who were also representatives of, like, the quote, unquote, Fallen south, which I think you see really strongly in Streetcar. You have one sister who is still in the delusion of, like, a pre Civil War era idea of what it means to be a Southern woman. And then you have Stella, who is like, I have embraced the fall, you know, and then so Amanda, in a lot of ways, both represents and, like, literalizes this. Like, not even delusion, but, like, the will to persevere, but, like, keeping this. The ideas of, like, well, we must have gentility, we must have this. We mustn't abandon this in order to, you know, in order to keep going, you know, she has that incredible speech to Laura after she's discovered the Rubicams college business fiasco, you know, like, about. I've seen too well what happens to unmarried women, you know, forced to eat the crust of humility all our lives, like, and being passed from, like, relative to relative and all of that. And it's just these were women and situations with whom Williams was extremely familiar. So, like, the depth that he brings to these women who, yes, can be very annoying. I think Amanda is an incredibly difficult role because I think it's so easy for her to either become purely a comic figure or, like, absolutely just, like, you can't stand her, depending on how it's pitched and what's cast around her. But I think understanding that, like, Williams did love his mother, even in so much as he, like, in many ways couldn't stand her and was, like, eager to get away from her, you know, like, all of that, I think helps bring perspective on, like, how you're going to approach a production of this, right? Like, I think if you were. If you were playing one of these characters, you'd be a fool not to engage with the autobiography, do you know what I mean? I think there's just so much to help you there, since there's so much available to us. So I don't know. That's where I would start, is the parallels in his own life. And obviously his sister Rose being the inspiration for much of his work, because she was. He had such immense guilt about having left her. And then his mother had one of the first frontal lobotomies, which was an experimental procedure at the time, in the 50s, performed on his sister Rose, who is Laura. And so she then was institutionalized for the rest of her life. You know, and it's. He had such. Oh, I found. Actually, I knew I brought this over for a reason. There's a little bit. So this is his letters to his friend Maria Saint. Just this book that I've picked up, but it's also like her recollections, like that a biographer has put in here. So this is in one of those little sections in between letters where Maria is talking about Tennessee Rose Williams. Tennessee's sister was the most important person in his life and the inspiration for most of his work. He was constantly concerned about her and guilty that he had done nothing to prevent her undergoing one of the first lobotomies on their mother's instruction in 1937. Oh, sorry. The 30s, of course, the operation had left her in need of constant institutional care. Whenever Tennessee talked about her, he would burst into fits of loud, hysterical laughter and roll his eyes round in embarrassment. He used to cry when he told the story of how, when they were children, he would tug at her ringlets, shouting, ding dong, ding dong. He used to ask me, how could I have been so cruel? Rose often used to write poetic postcards to her brother Tom, Tennessee's real name. She once wrote, tell Tom I love him so much he stole my heart away in the Dark Ages, I. And like that. That is the perspective of the man who's like saying these monologues at the beginning and the end of the play, you know, who's. Blow out your candles, Laura, and who's like reminiscing on this great grief of his life, probably, you know, And Tennessee Williams was a man who, I think had a lot of griefs, but I think a lot of them really sprung from this early relationship to Laura, to whom he was devoted to for the rest of his life. But, like, you know, Feels like he failed her at a critical juncture. And I think a lot of that grief is from whence this play springs. Which I think you need to understand when, again, not to see it, but to work on it. You have to approach it with all of that in mind. Because I think it informs so much of it for me.
