Participating in the staging of the 8th scene from Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire"

The first time I performed in a play was a very educational experience in my life and taught me a lot of things. I not only learned of my own mistakes, but that of others as well. The experience began by selecting the play, then were the first rehearsals, some experiments, meanwhile we gathered the props and at last, we performed before an audience.

The play was "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams. We performed the 8th scene during one of the classes. In the beginning we were to form pairs and select a scene from an American play. "A Streetcar Named Desire" was one of the recommended. I suggested to my pair that one, because I loved the intense emotions in Tennessee Williams and she told me I could decide it. I read the play and knew right away that I wanted to play Blanche. I felt I understood her and later that proved to be an advantage. Sometimes I could relate to her and knew that it would be an advantage, because I could release that side of me when playing the role. My partner agreed to play my sister. It was a bit difficult to decide which scene to play, because the best parts had Stanley in it.

The first rehearsal had in store for us a great surprise and two great delights. The surprise was that a man had arrived to the class. He was a British man who grew up in Portugal, tall and bulky, with a beard and mustache. The teacher asked who wanted him and we said we would like him. It was only because of this that I could suggest doing the 8th scene, which was actually a lot better than my first idea. This was one of the delights. Before the first rehearsal in front of the others, we only had time to give him a brief synopsis of the play and read out loud our parts once. Before we knew it, we were standing before the others, doing our best. The teacher said we were great under the circumstances. That was the second delight.

I got many advises. I always knew I had the tendency to speak unclear, but when there were many people telling me this, I knew I had to work on it. That was my biggest problem. When we were working on trying to get a grasp of our characters, the teacher asked us many questions about the people we were playing. I learned that to play Blanche right I needed to know her true feelings; the undercurrent of the play for her. In the beginning of the scene we had a bit of silence and this needed to be filled out. I had to show what had happened before this scene and what my hopes were for the next few minutes. I also had to see the important break in her life that happened in that scene, which was partly one of the causes for her insanity. That also had to be done without words. I learned that the silences are harder than the talking. Especially, because then the audience is watching the actors' faces and there can be no expressions on them which are out of place. Another advice was to interact with the other actors. At first we didn't touch each other and didn't look into the eye of the other person. This was of course partly because of the fact that we didn't know our lines and had to read them out. However, we didn't really know each other well. Only after the prompting of the teacher did we dare intrude on the personal space of the other. Of course, later on we became more comfortable around each other. We all learned that we were sisters, husband and wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law on stage, not strangers talking to each other.

I learned from the mistakes of others as well. When I did have to walk and talk at the same time, I learned not to walk around too much, because it can be disturbing for the audience. I watched out for blocking, which can be hard to avoid. If I ever needed to play a man, I would pay attention to the fact that they had different postures and bodily reactions. Also, silences can be good and meaningful, but they shouldn't be stretched out too long. At last but not least, when coming onto stage, I have to know where I'm coming from and what's my purpose for walking.

We did one exercise that was rather funny, but also helpful. When I was talking, I was often sitting on my chair, concentrating on the words. Others had the same problem. To eliminate this, we had to do our scene without words, in complete silence. We could only keep track of the dialogues through gestures. Of course, we overdid the gestures a bit.For the scene we needed quite a few props. The most noticeable ones were the food that we needed, because it took place during a birthday dinner, candles for a cake that was even part of the talk, drinks, for they drank and a phone, which was picked up twice. Of the food we were eating it was mentioned that it was greasy. We settled for sausages, this was the easiest of the props. The plates that we used were plastic, since we had to pay attention to the fact that one of them would land on the floor. However, we had to do a bit of thinking when choosing the drinks. Blanche was an alcoholic and it was mentioned in the play that she drank heavy liquor. Of course, we filled the bottle with water. A character examination of Stanley was needed for his drink, which turned out to be beer. For Stella, we had to take into consideration the fact that she was pregnant, so her choice of beverage was Coke. The props we thought last were the clothes, which were rather easy. I chose a revealing dress for Blanche with heavy make-up, because she wanted to seduce Mitch during the dinner. Stella wore a conservative dress and Stanley an undershirt as the uneducated, working class man.

The success of the performance in front of the real audience could only be thanked to the many things I learned during the rehearsals from my teacher and fellow actors. I enjoyed taking a part in the work that surrounded the staging of the scene and hope to do it again.