Exercises; The Creative Process; Readers & Markets; Genre Flier Project

Poetry exercise #1: (10 minutes)

1. Write 5 objects that you see every day in the order that you see them.
2. Write down 3 non-primary colors (not red, yellow, orange, green, blue, indigo)
3. Write an experience that made you angry (in the recent past, or years ago)
4. Write a forbidden thought--something you wouldn't normally think--or tell anyone...
5. Write 3 questions for which you never found an answer
6. Write something about love or life that you find boring
7. Write 3 slant rhymes (2 words that sound similar: moon, mine; jingle, jewel, etc.)
8. Write 3 things that someone said to you in the last 48 hours
9. Write 1 transitional object (an object that helped you get over a difficult time in your life; a teddy bear, for example)
10. If you had a rock band, what would your band be called? Name it.

Take #10 and that will be your title. 

#5 is the first line of your poem.

#4 will be your middle or volta.

Combine #3 and #6 into one thought or idea and place where you need to.

Try to find a theme

#2 & #7 combine a color with one of your slant rhymes.

Use lines #1, #9 where you can (or leave them out)

#8 is the last line of your poem.

Smooth over the poem, change what you need to in order to keep a theme or metaphor or to keep your poem consistent.

As we watch, take notes on the "5 Uncommon Poetry Tips to Instantly Write Better Poems" (video); then let's try another poem draft today. Follow these rules...
1. Start from an emotion: brainstorm ideas and images in your journal. Choose only one. And/or start from an image. Choose only one image to go along with your emotion.
2. Develop the tension in your poem/image. (2 elements in opposition: conflict/narrative tension, thematic/subtextual tension, or formal/structural tension--ex. enjambement, juxtaposition, syntax, linebreaks, dashes, etc.)
3. Leave some room for the reader. Less is more. It's okay a poem is short. Avoid over telling. Show the image and then let the reader put the pieces together--don't do their work for them.
4. Take a risk. Experiment with forms, syntax, structure, etc. Play with your words.
5. Steal more. Choose your favorite poem. Extract it, steal lines, steal its structure or theme, etc. Look here for some online poetry. Recreate the poem your own way in your own style...or model your work on the work of others...

Write a new original poem using these 5 tips.

Type up your new poetry drafts, along with your other 2 poems (words, words, words exercise & how to write...) from last class and submit your work to our Google classroom assignment by Tuesday, Feb. 4. Drafts are worth participation/writing credit.

Period 2:

The Creative Process: Six Steps of Art/or Becoming an Artist from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. 

1. Idea/Purpose
2. Form
3. Idiom
4. Structure
5. Craft
6. Surface

In your journal, reflect which stage(s) do you seem to identify with most?

LAB TASK: Genre Brochure

Writing is a business. Books are published, not only because they're good for you, are beautifully written, or introduce you to human characters, events, and culture, but also because they sell. Publishers count on readers to consume books. It's all about the $, and less about the art. But it is also an art.

The first thing we should consider as writers is our reader. If we don't please our reader, we won't be able to sell a book. If we can't sell a book, we aren't going to be very successful writers, etc. It's a vicious circle. But before we continue, it's a really good idea to remember this golden rule of writing.

If you don't please your audience, you don't succeed.

So let's chat a bit about our potential audiences:

AUDIENCE

There are 3 general types of readers that a writer should be aware of:

• Fantasists: readers who read to escape the tediousness of ordinary life, seeking new frontiers and imaginative fiction
• Realists: readers who read about contemporary life to learn about or reinforce personal experiences
• Pragmatists: readers who read for a specific purpose--from cooking to learning history or science

Most of us favor one or two of these styles when we read. Our tastes can change depending on our life experience and maturity. Well read and well-rounded readers enjoy all types of reading styles at some point in their life.

Readers also become loyal to writers. Publishers count on this to occur. The more you like a specific author's style and writing, the more likely you will continue to buy books by this author.

In today's writing market there are a variety of genres that writers tend to write. Knowing what readers expect from these genres will help you as a writer give your audience what it wants. So let's learn about these audiences and what they expect!

• General fiction: chick lit, domestic drama, sports, vampire lit, LGBT, humor, war, urban/black or minority literature, literary (melange)
• Historical fiction: romance, detective thriller, adventure, family saga, drama, multi-volume, African-American/urban
• Romance: paranormal, historical, regency, horror/gothic, LGBT, inspirational, contemporary, African-American/urban
• Mysteries and Thrillers: detectives, cozy, Christian, noir, forensic, police procedural, courtroom/legal, LGBT, historical, thriller, ghost story/paranormal, horror, spy, action
• Science Fiction: soft, hard, apocalypse, cyberpunk, feminist, comic/humor, first contact, colonization, military, time travel, steampunk, space opera, dystopian, speculative
• Fantasy: heroic, Arthurian, dark, urban, alternate history, RPG, high, science fantasy, speculative, magical-realism, fable
• Autobiography & Memoir: bootstrap, political, family, celebrity, travel, survival, extraordinary lives, confession/conversion, spiritual memoir, writer's memoir, new journalism
• Literary Fiction: any of the above, but with better writing quality, skill, and attention to craft 
• Children's/Young Adult: any of the above, usually with more fantasy or realist elements 
• New Journalism: memoirs, science, travel, history, writing about writing, creative non-fiction, etc.

LAB TASK #2: Classroom Project: Genre Brochure

• Find a partner. Together, agree upon and sign up for one of the writing markets.
• Choose one of the genres in bold above--check the subcategories so that you know what you're getting into--more details can be found in the article you should have read as homework...
• Together, you will be expected to create a brochure for your chosen genre to promote the genre to a fantasist, realist, or pragmatist reader.
• Take a look at the questions bulleted below. You will want to be able to answer these questions in your brochure.
• In a Microsoft Word Doc, from the FILE menu, please select New From Template.
• Choose BROCHURE as a template. Select one you like. Create only a 6 panel brochure (not an 8 panel one or half page). TIP: if you write 3 panels, your partner can write the other 3 panels...
• Create a brochure about your chosen genre by following the steps below. Be creative. Play around with design and how you present the information in a clear and creative way. You may use graphics and lists to provide answers to these questions:

1. Describe this genre. What is it?
2. Who is the target reader (a fantasist, a realist, a pragmatist, or what combination?)
3. What are some expectations a reader of this genre might expect?
4. What are some categories of this genre? AND what are the expectations a reader might expect from this genre?
5. Examples of some popular or famous books or films that fit this genre; and/or examples of authors who write in this type of genre.

As a general guideline:

Page 1: Panel 1 (most left = inside flap); Panel 2 (center = back panel of brochure); Panel 3 (title. Please include your name(s))
Page 2: Panel 1 (inside flap); Panel 2 (inside center); Panel 3 (other flap)

See my model as an example.

NOTE: Brochures should not have too much text--they should use graphics and pictures to get information across. Big concepts (like subgenres) can be listed, as opposed to painstakingly explained. Write your notes in your journal (double dipping!) and organize your notes to select only the most important information about your chosen genre in the brochure! More tips on the way. The brochure project is not due yet.

Finally, before you leave today, please complete the short survey regarding genre units for this course.

HOMEWORK: Complete your poem drafts (4) and submit 1 file (with 4 poems) to the Google Classroom. Make sure you have taken the short genre survey as well.

New Semester; Notebooks, Writing Exercises; Scott McCloud

Welcome to Writing for Publication!

Period 3: Please complete the following tasks/questions/prompts and answer the questions on your handout or journal.

What does it take to be a "writer"? What skills do we need? What attitude do we need to cultivate? Let's find out.

• Top Ten Writing Rules Advice from Famous Writers (5 min.)

Write the top 10 writing rules on the handout/note graphic organizer or in your journal for participation credit today.

Journaling: using your journal for the creative powers of good. Let's read the handout on journaling by Francine Prose. Glance at the exercises. We'll get to these later (see homework).

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

Make a list of at least 10 words in your journal. Pick your favorite words or words that "resonate" with you from that list. If you wrote a vague or non-specific word, replace it with a more exact and specific one:

ex. tree = Japanese maple, hawthorn, birch, Sycamore, a linden tree in full bloom...
ex. thing = a blue bicycle, a valise with a broken lock, swimming trunks, a crushed fedora...
ex. stuff = macaroni & cheese, a dust bunny, a ball of twine, a hammer and nails, an empty can of tuna...

IMPORTANT WRITING TIP: After writing a first draft, go back through your writing and change all general or non-specific nouns and verbs into specific and concrete ones.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT WRITING TIP: Use your journal to gather a "snapshot" of objects in a room, physical details and description of a person or a setting...

NEXT, read the following poem:

From : "Afternoons" by Jorge H. Aigla

Those afternoons, the Saturdays of my tender childhood
in Mexico City
were just lovely...
I remember going to a store
that sold mountain climbing equipment:
my father knew “The Goat,”
one of the climbers of the great Popocatepetl,
and he would show us boots, ropes, and hammers,
and photographs of the Valley of Mexico and of snow.
In the old section of the city,
where they sold model airplanes
with gasoline engines,
I would watch the wealthy kids buy
and we in our dreams would fly.

Now it's our turn. Let's set the timer and bleed words and ideas on the page...Take 10 minutes and write a poem modeled on the one we just read:

1. Think of a specific time and place
2. What did you think or feel while in this time and place?
3. What was going on in this time and place? What details do you remember?
4. What other image do you remember from this time and place?
5. What did you learn or come to understand about yourself by experiencing what happened in this time and place?

Your poem draft should be at least 10 lines in length. Follow the pattern.

Another example:

Auld Lang Syne 

New Years Day we got the frantic call in the morning.
I was not awake--and my 7-year-old self did not yet understand
What a stroke was. My grandfather 
Taught me how to plant seeds in the garden;
He taught me how to trim the grapes to cull the harvest;
He taught me how to respect the first frost.
He taught me how blood, thicker than burgundy, 

Clots. How age will somehow creep its way

Into a still man's vineyard. How it will

Sour the wine of prosperity, the leftover

Dregs of a celebration for a new year. Death wipes

Its clumsy feet on our doormat, knocking to be let in,

And I now know what it is to lose a grandfather

Locked in the glassy stare of a mortal body.

Write a poem using the model and guidelines above.

Done so soon?

Check out Sherman Alexie's poem: "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel". 
TASK: write instructions on how to write the great fantasy novel, the great television script, the great science report, the great American newspaper article, the great American gay romance, the greatest hip hop song lyrics, the greatest dating quiz, the best (or worst) love poem, the greatest historical novel, the greatest creative writing draft, the greatest film review, the clearest board game instructions, the tastiest recipe, the greatest greeting card, etc. Pick something and use Alexie's poem as a model or guide, try your own draft on a topic.

Period 4:

The Creative Process: Six Steps of Art/or Becoming an Artist from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. 

1. Idea/Purpose
2. Form
3. Idiom
4. Structure
5. Craft
6. Surface

In your journal, reflect which stage(s) do you seem to identify with most?

Time remaining? Work on your homework. Details below!

HOMEWORK: Complete your poem drafts. Bring them to our next class as completed 1st drafts. Try the exercises in the handout. Read the handout on Genres and bring the article back with you to our next class for a project. 

Portfolio Work; Journals Due!

Please work on your portfolio for semester one.

Complete any missing work for MP2.

Turn in your journals for MP2.

Thus ends our first semester in Creative Writing.

HOMEWORK: None.

Desire, Desire, Desire; Parody & Portfolio Prep

Please turn in your play analysis (either by hand in my in-box or through Google classroom) for A Streetcar Named Desire. 

Today, let's read the parody Desire, Desire, Desire by Christopher Durang.

After reading, select a character from one of Tennessee Williams plays or a scene or situation and write a parody of the play in a scene that is between 3-10 pages in length. Use proper playwriting format as you have learned. This assignment will count as extra credit for MP2.

EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY:

• Take a character from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Glass Menagerie, or A Streetcar Named Desire and write a monologue or scene that involves that character that did not appear in the play. Perhaps you could write a scene between Brick and Skipper, or between Amanda and Tom's estranged father, or a birthday party when Blanche and Stella were young teenage girls still living at the plantation. 
• Write a parody of Tennessee Williams' work. Poke fun at his characters or their revealing of secrets. Parodies work when you exaggerate characters or plots or scenes from the original source. See Blue Harvest (Family Guy) as an example.
• Place a character in a Williams play in a contemporary setting and write that scene. 

Extra credit will be due by 1/25 (end of Midterm Week). Submit your extra credit in our Google Classroom site.

Then, please move next door to the lab to work on your 1st semester portfolio & reflection. You will continue this assignment with Ms. Gamzon tomorrow and through Friday when the portfolio is due.

HOMEWORK: Write a parody; prepare your portfolio. Journals will be collected Thursday.

Midterm Portfolio: End of Semester One

MIDTERM PORTFOLIO

There are two (2) parts to your midterm portfolio:

A. A 2-3 page, double-spaced, typed self evaluation essay (about 500-750 words)
B. Your 1st semester drafts of all your CW class assignments (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and scripts only). There is no need to put homework assignments, worksheets, or projects (like human interest films, powerpoint poetry or presentations) in your portfolio. You may refer to these things in your reflection. Most pieces are already in your portfolio.

Part A. Self Evaluation Essay (see details below)

Part B. Portfolio

Self Reflection Non Fiction - Creative Essay:
During your freshman year, we have thrown quite a bit of information, projects, and assignments your way. We did this so that you had the opportunity to grow as a writer and a student.

It is true that the most important qualification for writers is that they write. Apart from this, reading is also the most important way to improve your writing at this stage of your development and education. These introductory courses are designed to get you to know yourself as a student and writer a little better, and we're going to continue that trend into the second semester.

Reflective piece: 2-3 pages, double-spaced. Answer some of these questions:

• Write about how you’ve grown as a writer so far this year by taking Ms. Gamzon or my classes. 
• Reflect on what has been easy or hard for you as a student and/or as a writer. 
• Comment on what areas you feel you need more work in; 
• Reflect on your progress as a writer, a reader, and as a student. 
• Discuss the work you have done so far in our classes. 
• What have you learned (about yourself or about the craft and art of writing) from writing these projects or drafts? 
• Comment on the value of Performance, Word, and Text and Grammar & Style.
• Comment on the value of keeping a writing journal. 
• Respond to the books you have read in Creative Writing and compare those to what you have read in your English classes. 
• Comment on your progress with grammar & writing in different genres or formats.
• What have you learned?

Finally, give yourself at least 1 writing goal for the second semester. You may give yourself more than one goal if you'd like.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Conclusion; Final Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire

We will screen the rest of the film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof today. Please turn in your observation sheets as participation credit by the end of today's class.

Once we're done, we'll pick up our last Tennessee Williams' play: A Streetcar Named Desire. SOTA is producing this play in February. Go see it if possible.

We'll read together a bit (for the rest of class), but finish reading this script and completing the analysis questions for homework.

Largely, A Streetcar Named Desire centers around Stella, her sister Blanche who drops in for a visit, and Stella's husband Stanley. Drama, secrets, and complications, as only Tennessee Williams can provide, ensues.

A Streetcar Named Desire can be described as an elegy, or poetic expression of mourning, for an Old South that died in the first part of the twentieth century.
The plot of A Streetcar Named Desire is mostly driven by the dueling personalities of Blanche and Stanley (protagonist and antagonist), with Stella acting as a confidante to both Stanley, her husband, and Blanche, her sister.

1. Light is used as a motif and symbol in the play. Consider what its presence or absence indicates. Particularly, what does it mean as a personal symbol for Blanche?
2. Williams uses sound as a dramatic device. When and what does Blanche hear music? Look for this sort of symbolism throughout the play. Music helps create tone, as well.

The two most complex characters in the play are Blanche and Stanley. What follows is an examination and analysis of the main characters in the play. When we read a novel, short story, or watch a film or play, we should be ready to examine the meaning as well as analyze the characters. Who are they? How does the author or actor portray them?

Blanche DuBois
"When the play begins, Blanche is already a fallen woman in society's eyes. Her family fortune and estate are gone, she lost her young husband to suicide years earlier, and she is a social pariah due to her indiscrete sexual behavior. She also has a bad drinking problem, which she covers up poorly. Behind her veneer of social snobbery and sexual propriety, Blanche is an insecure, dislocated individual. She is an aging Southern belle who lives in a state of perpetual panic about her fading beauty. She does not want to belong in this setting, but she fits in quite nicely to our image of New Orleans as a cesspit and ancient behemoth. Stanley quickly sees through Blanche's act and seeks out information about her past.

In the Kowalski household, Blanche pretends to be a woman who has never known indignity. Her false propriety is not simply snobbery, however; it constitutes a calculated attempt to make herself appear attractive to new male suitors. Blanche depends on male sexual admiration for her sense of self-esteem, which means that she has often succumbed to passion. By marrying, Blanche hopes to escape poverty and the bad reputation that haunts her. But because the chivalric Southern gentleman savior and caretaker (represented by the ideal Shep Huntleigh) she hopes will rescue her is extinct, Blanche is left with no realistic possibility of future happiness. As Blanche sees it, Mitch is her only chance for contentment, even though he is far from her ideal.

Stanley's relentless persecution of Blanche foils her pursuit of Mitch as well as her attempts to shield herself from the harsh truth of her situation. The play chronicles the subsequent crumbling of Blanche's self-image and sanity. Stanley himself takes the final stabs at Blanche, destroying the remainder of her sexual and mental esteem by raping her and then committing her to an insane asylum. In the end, Blanche blindly allows herself to be led away by a kind doctor, ignoring her sister's cries. This final image is the sad culmination of Blanche's vanity and total dependence upon men for happiness."

Stanley Kowalski
"Audience members may well see Stanley as an egalitarian hero at the play's start. He is loyal to his friends and passionate to his wife. Stanley possesses an animalistic physical vigor that is evident in his love of work, of fighting, and of sex. His family is from Poland, and several times he expresses his outrage at being called “Polack” and other derogatory names. When Blanche calls him a “Polack,” he makes her look old-fashioned and ignorant by asserting that he was born in America, is an American, and can only be called “Polish.” Stanley represents the new, heterogeneous America to which Blanche doesn't belong, because she is a relic from a defunct social hierarchy. He sees himself as a social leveler, as he tells Stella in Scene Eight.

Stanley's intense hatred of Blanche is motivated in part by the aristocratic past Blanche represents. He also (rightly) sees her as untrustworthy and does not appreciate the way she attempts to fool him and his friends into thinking she is better than they are. Stanley's animosity toward Blanche manifests itself in all of his actions toward her—his investigations of her past, his birthday gift to her, his sabotage of her relationship with Mitch.

In the end, Stanley's down-to-earth character proves harmfully crude and brutish. His chief amusements are gambling, bowling, sex, and drinking, and he lacks ideals and imagination. His disturbing, degenerate nature, first hinted at when he beats his wife, is fully evident after he rapes his sister-in-law. Stanley shows no remorse for his brutal actions. The play ends with an image of Stanley as the ideal family man, comforting his wife as she holds their newborn child. The wrongfulness of this representation, given what we have learned about him in the play, ironically calls into question society's decision to ostracize Blanche." (both taken from Sparknotes)

Mitch, Stella and some of the other characters provide Stanley and Blanche with appropriate foils. Mitch and Stella, in particular, complete the possible futures for Stanley/Stella and Blanche/Mitch.

There is a lot in this play (as in all Tenessee Williams' work). Characters are complex, plot is driven by the desires of its characters, conflict is nicely supported through characterization, setting is significant, and literary devices such as symbolism run rampant through its pages. No wonder the world knows this play. It is fine play writing.

A Streetcar Named Desire clips:
The 1951 film starred a young Marlon Brando and actress Vivien Leigh. The movie was directed by Elia Kazan. Read a little about each actor and the director--this is important for those of you interested in film production.

Here's the famous Stella scene.
And the screaming contest it created. 

EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY:

• Take a character from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Glass Menagerie, or A Streetcar Named Desire and write a monologue or scene that involves that character that did not appear in the play. Perhaps you could write a scene between Brick and Skipper, or between Amanda and Tom's estranged father, or a birthday party when Blanche and Stella were young teenage girls still living at the plantation. 
• Write a parody of Tennessee Williams' work. Poke fun at his characters or their revealing of secrets. Parodies work when you exaggerate characters or plots or scenes from the original source. See Blue Harvest (Family Guy) as an example.
• Place a character in a Williams play in a contemporary setting and write that scene. 

Extra credit will be due by 1/25 (end of Midterm Week). Submit your extra credit in our Google Classroom site.

HOMEWORK: Please read the rest of A Streetcar Named Desire and complete the play analysis sheet for Tuesday, Jan. 15.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Viewing)

Today we will watch the film Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). When you complete the film, please turn in your viewing sheet.

HOMEWORK: None.

Glass Menagerie Quiz; Tennessee Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Day 1

Please complete the quiz on The Glass Menagerie this morning. When you have completed your quiz, please learn more about Tennessee Williams at these links (please use headphones as peers may still be finishing their quiz...):

Things to know about Tennessee Williams. Please watch this short documentary student film about the playwright.

Tennessee Williams "was born Thomas Lanier Williams III in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911. His friends began calling him Tennessee in college, in honor of his Southern accent and his father's home state. Williams's father, C.C. Williams, was a traveling salesman and a heavy drinker. Williams's mother, Edwina, was a Mississippi clergyman's daughter prone to hysterical attacks. Until Williams was seven, he, his parents, his older sister, Rose, and his younger brother, Dakin, lived with Edwina's parents in Mississippi.

In 1918, the Williams family moved to St. Louis, marking the start of the family's deterioration. C.C.'s drinking increased, the family moved sixteen times in ten years, and the young Williams, always shy and fragile, was ostracized and taunted at school. During these years, he and Rose became extremely close. Edwina and Williams's maternal grandparents also offered the emotional support he required throughout his childhood. Williams loathed his father but grew to appreciate him somewhat after deciding in therapy as an adult that his father had given him his tough survival instinct.

After being bedridden for two years as a child due to severe illness, Williams grew into a withdrawn, effeminate adolescent whose chief solace was writing. At sixteen, Williams won a prize in a national competition that asked for essays answering the question “Can a good wife be a good sport?” His answer was published in Smart Set magazine. The following year, he published a horror story in a magazine called Weird Tales, and the year after that he entered the University of Missouri to study journalism. While in college, he wrote his first plays, which were influenced by members of the southern literary renaissance such as Robert Penn Warren, William Faulkner, Allen Tate, and Thomas Wolfe. Before Williams could receive his degree, however, his father forced him to withdraw from school. Outraged because Williams had failed a required ROTC program course, C.C. Williams made his son go to work at the same shoe company where he himself worked.

After three years at the shoe factory, Williams had a minor nervous breakdown. He then returned to college, this time at Washington University in St. Louis. While he was studying there, a St. Louis theater group produced two of his plays, The Fugitive Kind and Candles to the Sun. Further personal problems led Williams to drop out of Washington University and enroll in the University of Iowa. While he was in Iowa, Rose, who had begun suffering from mental illness later in life, underwent a prefrontal lobotomy (an intensive brain surgery). The event greatly upset Williams, and it left his sister institutionalized for the rest of her life. Despite this trauma, Williams finally managed to graduate in 1938.

In the years following his graduation, Williams lived a bohemian life, working menial jobs and wandering from city to city. He continued to work on drama, however, receiving a Rockefeller grant and studying playwriting at the New School in New York. His literary influences were evolving to include the playwright Anton Chekhov and Williams's lifelong hero, the poet Hart Crane. He officially changed his name to Tennessee Williams upon the publication of his short story “The Field of Blue Children” in 1939. During the early years of World War II, Williams worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter and also prepared material for what would become The Glass Menagerie.

In 1944, The Glass Menagerie opened in New York and won the prestigious New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, catapulting Williams into the upper echelon of American playwrights. A Streetcar Named Desire premiered three years later at the Barrymore Theater in New York City. The play, set in contemporary times, describes the decline and fall of a fading Southern belle named Blanche DuBois. A Streetcar Named Desire cemented Williams's reputation, garnering another Drama Critics' Circle Award and also a Pulitzer Prize. Williams went on to win another Drama Critics' Circle Award and Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

Much of the pathos found in Williams's drama was mined from the playwright's own life. Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness, and insanity were all part of Williams's world. His experience as a known homosexual in an era unfriendly to homosexuality also informed his work. Williams's most memorable characters, many of them female, contain recognizable elements of their author, Edwina, and Rose. His vulgar, irresponsible male characters, such as Stanley Kowalski, were likely modeled on Williams's own father and other males who tormented Williams during his childhood.

Williams's early plays also connected with the new American taste for realism that emerged following the Depression and World War II. The characters in A Streetcar Named Desire are trying to rebuild their lives in postwar America: Stanley and Mitch served in the military, while Blanche had affairs with young soldiers based near her home.

Williams set his plays in the South, but the compelling manner in which he rendered his themes made them universal, winning him an international audience and worldwide acclaim. However, most critics agree that the quality of Williams's work diminished as he grew older. He suffered a long period of depression following the death of his longtime partner, Frank Merlo, in 1963. His popularity during these years also declined due to changed interests in the theater world. During the radical 1960s and 1970s, nostalgia no longer drew crowds, and Williams's explorations of sexual mores came across as tired and old-fashioned.

Williams died in 1983 when he choked on a medicine-bottle cap in an alcohol-related incident at the Elysée Hotel in New York City. He was one month short of his seventy-second birthday. In his long career, he wrote twenty-five full-length plays (five made into movies), five screenplays, over seventy one-act plays, hundreds of short stories, two novels, poetry, and a memoir. The mark he left on the tradition of realism in American drama is incredible.

Check out these other Williams' films:

• Streetcar Named Desire (1951) 
• Baby Doll (1956)
• Suddenly Last Summer (1959)
• The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) This was taken from Tennessee Williams' novel.
• Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
• Night of the Iguana (1964)
• The Glass Menagerie (1950 film, complete)

Most of Williams' plays (as well as his films) revolve around a central secret: something terrible or haunting or degenerate that a protagonist desperately tries to cover up. Williams' women are often unhappy, the men brutish and insensitive. Oh, where will it lead but to modern American drama!

We can learn a lot about playwriting from Tennessee Williams. A character in pain or conflict lies at the center of his plays. The use of a "secret" allows appropriate tension and rising conflict until a climactic scene reveals the truth. Learn from this.

Our next example of Williams' work is the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), adapted into a film in 1958. Here's some information about the film:

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof:

"Shortly after Menagerie closed, [Tennessee Williams] went to work on a new piece..., producing his Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Another Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, followed in 1955. The crux of this latter work concerns the conflicts of a Mississippi family following the diagnosis of its patriarch, Big Daddy's, stomach cancer and the revelation of his darling alcoholic son's homosexuality. Cat premiered in New York under the direction of Elia Kazan, who revised the third act to give the play a more redemptive resolution. In 1958, director Richard Brooks adapted Cat" into a popular film starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Judith Anderson, and Burl Ives. "To Williams's dismay, Brooks excised all explicit references to Brick's homosexuality in deference to the studio censors."

The play involves the following characters:

Brick (Paul Newman): a former football star and favorite son of Big Daddy, he has some issues.
Maggie "The Cat" (Elizabeth Taylor): Brick's lonely wife.
Big Daddy (Burl Ives): Brick's father; recently diagnosed with a "spastic colon" as opposed to the truth.
Big Mama (Judith Anderson): Big Daddy's wife; the matriarch of the family.
Gooper (Jack Carson): Brick's older brother.
Mae (Madeleine Sherwood): Gooper's pregnant wife and busy body.
Reverend Tooker (Vaugn Taylor): A guest and friend of the family, a reverend.
Doctor Baugh (Larry Gates): Big Daddy's physician & friend of the family.
Children: Mae and Gooper's clan of brats.

Please learn the following basic film vocabulary. See the handout for details. As you watch the film, note how the cinematographer uses some of these film elements. More on film later in this course.

HOMEWORK: None. If you didn't finish The Glass Menagerie, this is your last chance to read it. Many students have work that is missing or late. This needs to be completed and turned in for minimal credit.