The Glass Menagerie Written Coursework

The Glass Menagerie Written Coursework

The Glass Menagerie is a personal play full of remorse. Tom, as an unreliable narrator and the main character of the play, shows two layers of the story. One layer is his memory that is delivered as the basic storyline, while the other layer is his ostinato-like emotion underlies all of the memories of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Tom’s opening and the ending monologues show the foundation of all of the stories: penitence. However, this foundation is not apparent until the last scene, where Tom leads himself to the memory of him finally making the decision to leave the family; plus the monologue at the end, in an almost illusionary reality, where Tom slightly broken down by his memory and shows his penitence of the family. Thus I, acting as Tom, chose the scene 7 plus the monologue to show the most well-staged part of the show, where the second layer is shown and flows it into the audience’s mind and enriches their memories of the previous part of the play.

As the description of the play states, The glass Menagerie is a “memory play”. The memory that being recalled by a person is often driven by one or multiple purposes. In the opening monologue, the narrator, Tom, says: “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” The “illusion” here is Tom’s memory of the family, while the “truth” is the pain beneath the dream like pleasant memories. The pain, the guilt triggered by leaving the family, can be seen as the purpose that initiate the memories. Since the play is a memory play, the emotion that delivered should be considered to be more important than the storyline laying upon. Emotion thus should be put on the priority.

However, the main emotion is not as apparent in the beginning in the language. Instead, it is shown in the music, and, throughout the whole play, the music has become the emotion foundation. Considering this special role of the music, we decided to focus on the music more to enrich the emotional layer of our production. As we interpreted: the bass stone of the play is the feeling of penitence, we made some choices of our music used in the acting to constantly and deliberately convey the emotion we chose.

Since Tom is feeling regretful during the whole show, the musics we chose in our performance are generally sad. The keys and the chords used in the musics provide a melancholy atmosphere. On the other hand, since in our performance there are essential differences between the dinner argument and Tom’s monologue, we decided to apply different musics in these two sub-scenes.

Because the argument is the end of the memory, we seem it as the climax of Tom’s penitence, where Tom has to stop going further thinking about the life of Laura without him. Thus the music here is relatively faster in tempo. The bass of the music show also be heavier and lower, while the volume of the music ideally increased gradually. By applying these elements, the audience will able to see how the collision between Tom and Amanda was escalated and able to unconsciously receive the message of Tom feeling worse while he sinking deeper to the memory.

On the other hand, the music in the monologue is relatively slower and more static. As Tom says: “Laura I tried to leave you behind me, but I’m more faithful than I intended to be,” the emotion here is not escalating regret but a willingness to get rid of the inextricable regret. Thus we chose the music with slow and gluey melody to create a sensible despair from the haunted shadow.

As I stated there are two layers of the play, one is Tom’s feeling in the past, while the other one is Tom’s feeling in the present when he is recalling the past. Music, as I discussed, an atmosphere of the play, is an essential yet unnoticeable element. The rest of the essay will turn its focus to the more obvious elements and actings that reveal the layer respectively. In term of the acting techniques, I adapted two methods that I am familiar with: The Brecht’s “thinking behind the lines”, and Lee Strasberg’s The Method. I mainly used Brecht’s technique during the memory part of the play to show the unrealistic nature by exaggeration. I used Strasberg’s technique in the monologue to show the characteristic and to make Tom’s emotion seems more realistic.

The first layer, Tom’s feeling in the past is easy to sense throughout the whole show, especially in the arguments between him and Amanda. In every argument, Tom was put on the inferior state to Amanda first, and then tried to gather power to speak. In the scene 7, after Jim left, Tom was called to return and to explain Jim’s engagement. Because Tom did not know the condition of the gentleman caller, he is inferior to Amanda. During the performance, I replied Amanda’s query of Jim’s engagement with Betty with surprised. I used a tone of whispering and lowered my head when I was delivering the line saying: “I’ll be jiggered!” By using this self-talking style, I showed Tom’s concern and his bewilderment towards the unexpected condition. It was the fluster that put Tom into an inferior state of the argument.

However, as soon as Tom realize his inferior position, he tried to fight back. Immediately, Tom says: “I didn't know about that.” To show the anger and the willingness to take control, I turned my head to Amanda and raised my voice. By pointing my voice to Amanda, I showed a sense of self-defense. Starting from this sentence, I tried to keep my voice in the same level of sharpness. At the same time, as adapting Tom’s personality, I tried to think that I am not yet attacking Amanda’s statement, but waiting for her weakness. I kept this attitude until Amanda says: “You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!” When I heard this line, my deliberately changed my thoughts into “I’m done with it.” or “Annoying lousy witch.” By thinking of this, my facial expressions changed remarkably. Eyes rolling and signings were presented. At this point, I am not thinking of leaving the family forever. Instead, as usual, I just wanted to escape the family temporarily: go to a bar and buy a drink. However, I would admit that I would not bare to stay in the house any second longer. Thus I moved fast and went straight to put on my coat and shoes. When Amanda asked where am I going, I replied in a moderate anger, without thinking of leaving the family forever.

Tom’s anger escalated more and reached to the climax as Amanda said her lines after I said: “I’m going to the movies,” especially when she said: “Don’t think about us, a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who's crippled and has no job!” When Amanda said this, I would stopped tidying up my clothes to show that the lines had triggered me. Since it mentioned that Tom did not think of Laura, and Tom thinks he did, the line inflamed Tom’s pride. On stage, I would think that I was underrated by Amanda and was not appreciated for the whole time. The feeling of unfairness drives me mad. Being confirmed by Amanda that I was not useful for the family, the weakness of feeling futile gave me an eccentric determination. This is the moment that Tom decided to leave the family forever. During the performance, I patiently waited Amanda to finish her lecture and calmly walked across the room to get my hat and then go out room. The remained anger also drove me to slam the door loudly when I left.

In the monologue section, Tom goes back to reality and thus need a completely acting. In fact, the ending monologue is where the second layer of the play mostly revealed. I applied the Method Acting into this section by imprinting the memory and worsen it in my head. I done this by convincing myself that I did nothing to comfort Laura in the past. As an unreliable narrator, the memory that showed before could be manipulated. Thus I pictured myself that I did not help Laura in the past. For example, I wanted to comfort Laura when she broke her glass menagerie but I did not, instead, I went to work without saying anything to Laura. By thinking scenarios like this, I was able to stimulate real guilty towards Laura, not only that I did not help her and left the family, but also that I was trying to deceive myself and being weak. The implement of The Method enriched the emotion of Tom.

In term of performing, we replaced a part of Tom’s monologue by a short Amanda’s monologue. The decision is based on two reasons: one is to add more parts for Amanda, the other is to make Tom seem to regret on Amanda, too. The monologue is about how Amanda had 17 gentlemen callers and married Tom's father. This monologue is going after Tom's line "...in my father's footsteps, attempting to find what was lost in space. I travelled around a great deal." This heartbreaking monologue about how Tom's father left family works well at this point. One of the reasons is that it served as a draw back to remind the audience how the departure of the father damaged the family. As an add-in in the Tom's monologue, it amplifies Tom's guilt towards the family, which makes the later regret seems more realistic. Another reason is that this Amanda's monologue is echoing the line: "what was lost in space." By implying Amanda (or the family) is the one that lost, the monologue shows that Tom is not only regretting that he left Laura, but also regretting for Amanda in some degree, which I think makes the play more complete. When I said "what was lost in space," I turned my face aside towards to Amanda. At the same time, Amanda is delivering her monologue showing her weakness and her desire of sense of belonging. As Amanda is away from Tom, and the light between them is dimmed, it shows that Amanda or the perception of affiliation is what Tom is looking for subconsciously but can never reach, too.

The weakness of the changing is that we don't have a picture of Tom's father on the wall. The picture is an important element as a towering reminder of the painful past of the family. The presence of the picture can lead to better complement of our production.

As an individual, I also tried to create emotional memory in the monologue. In the second half of the monologue, I tried to picture the "perfume shop" in my head when I was walking and delivering lines. In my interpretation, I think this is the time that Tom is reconnecting the family and his wounds again. At first I saw only the shop and the window, it was beautiful and dreamy. It made me forget my pain. However, when I saw the glass bottles, I would start gradually recalling my guilt. The technique of picturing the perfume shop in my head also gave a smooth transition of emotional change.

As I discussed in the music section, Laura is Tom’s haunted memory and the origin of his guilty and penitence. When I said: “Suddenly, my sister touched my shoulder,” I frowned my eyebrows to show I was frightened. When I started to say: “I reach for a cigarette…” I spoke them as fast as I can, to show that Tom does these over and over again to get rid of the shadowed past. When I said “For nowadays the world is lit by lightings!” I forced myself to wipe out all the bad memories of Laura that I created before the monologue. I would recalled them a little bit in the next line: “So blow out your candles, Laura,” because Laura’s name is presented in the script. In the next line, I pretended and forced a gallantly smile, as the father’s picture to show the audience I was superficially got out of the shadow but still hurting deeply inside. This acting gave the smile a different meaning and enrich Tom’s miserable into a higher level.