The Glass Menagerie

I get it.

It's more fun to play video games than it is to go out and challenge the anti-rationality of the world.

It is the slowest death of everything.

Like the airplane.

I'm not saying it should, but that's just a fact.

So young women In a free society, like a truly free society, are going to get far more resources by getting married to a provider than by trying to get a job.

And you can read about this in the great play Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

Mucking about with typewriters.

Alcott elevated the domestic lives of young women to a subject worthy of serious literary exploration.

We see a much darker, much more fragile version of that family microcosm in Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie.

We have the Wingfield family, Amanda, the faded Southern belle mother, Tom, the frustrated provider dreaming of escape, and Laura, the deeply anxious sister with her collection of glass animals.

Here, the unstoppable march of change isn't a war.

But Margo Jones was actually, um, a producer, and she created her own theater in Dallas, Texas.

And she was also a director, and she co-directed the original production of The Glass Menagerie, and she, um, credited herself as sort of discovering and championing Tennessee Williams.

Yeah.

And so she was besties with him.

Last

Menagerie.

Last Menagerie, because everyone in the world talks about her performance.

Yeah.

And I...

Yeah.

But going to one we haven't mentioned, which was the first, The Glass Menagerie film of 1950, which is-

Oh, right

... an utter disaster.

I took a giant swing and and he said all the work you're doing is so great i want you to go home tonight figure out how to put all of it in your eyes because i want you to come back tomorrow and the director is going to want to watch this but you've got to figure out how to put all this work you're doing just in your eyes because i was doing so much with my face my arms my body and if you're listening to this and you've spent time on stage you understand the desire to make sure you're communicating not only every syllable vocally, but every gesture physically so that the back row of the house gets it.

And at that time, I had just threaded the needle through a really difficult but incredible production of The Glass Menagerie.

And I was in this place of really wanting to make sure everybody was was there with me.

So I went home, I did what I understood to mean, put it in my eyes, which required a lot of physical discipline because I'm often tempted to make big expressions with my face and big gestures with my body.

Wait.

I always think of Glass Menagerie.

I've read that play so many times.

Oh, my God.

Fred and Lucille fell in love and got married.

The Buffalo Evening News called their performance in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie poetic and sensitive.

They began to raise a family.

Their first daughter was Sydney, with whom I'm in regular contact.

On Broadway, I've got some stats for you.

That's the same as the Glass Menagerie, the Tennessee Williams play.

More than Streetcar Named Desire, also Tennessee Williams.

It's more than Waiting for Godot, more than The Crucible and Death of a Salesman from Arthur Miller.