Play Guide [1.2MB PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

WILLIAMS
favorite glass animal—a little unicorn that is both unique and lonely among the other glass
horses. Jim’s kindness helps Laura overcome some of her shyness. As Jim is trying to teach
her to dance they accidentally knock over the glass unicorn breaking off its horn so that
it becomes just like all the other horses. Will Laura, too, lose her uniqueness and become
just like all the other girls? Is Jim the gentleman caller Amanda has been hoping for? Will
Tom ever get over his guilt at taking after his father and abandoning his family? Will he
ever escape the pull of his sister’s memory?
-written by Andrea Moon, reprinted with permission from Cleveland Play House’s Study Guide for The Glass Menagerie
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Young Tom with his sister Rose
and mother Edwina
The Glass Menagerie
Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything
in his plays is in his life. – Elia Kazan, director of
many of Williams’ plays
Thomas Lanier Williams was born on March 26,
1911 in Columbus, Mississippi to parents Cornelius
and Edwina Dakin Williams. From an early age,
Thomas, often called Tom, felt he did not belong
anywhere. His father was often abusive, repeatedly
taunting his son as a “sissy boy.” Edwina was
a woman desperately holding onto a southern
Playwright Tennessee Williams
gentility that was out of place in her current
environment, similar to Amanda from The Glass Menagerie. Of his two siblings, Rose
and Dakin, Tom formed a very close attachment to his sister Rose, a woman with deep
emotional problems who would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Though he had been writing stories for years, it wasn’t until 1929, when Williams
attended a university production of Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen, that he decided to become a
playwright. He took a slight detour in his career when his father forced him to drop out
of school due to a poor grade. Cornelius Williams arranged
for Tom to work in a shoe factory, a job he considered
stifl ing. In 1935, not long after taking the warehouse job,
Tom suffered a nervous breakdown. Shortly thereafter,
Williams’ parents made a decision to have his sister Rose
lobotomized, a decision that haunted Tom for the rest of
his life.
Williams returned to school and graduated from the
University of Iowa in 1938, moving to New Orleans shortly
afterwards. There, Williams found a culture more openminded
than any he had ever experienced. While there
Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 6