Plastic Theatre / theatricality in The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams’s call for “a plastic theatre” in his production notes for The Glass Menagerie is one of the manifestoes of modern drama and the play becomes even more important as its experimental qualities are understood. Williams describes this plastic theatre that would use stage design,lighting,mime,dance and music in a symbolic way to reinforce the meaning of the play.Through his ‘Plastic symbols” Williams attempts to create a theatre language of profound emotional intensity.This emotional intensity leads him to employ poetic images and symbols in the dramatic text and drama leads towards plastic theatre through technical sides.

Images and symbols in different layers help The Glass Menagerie to gets its Plastic form.In this play the symbol of the glass animals of Laura poetically presents the breakable pure existence of her---Laura is both pretty and fragile like her glass figurines.The unicorn with the broken horn symbolises that true love can not last long in this cruel world.To give the dramma its plastic form Williams converts his characters even to symbols.Amanda as a symbol functions both as a cuning mother and a frustrated middle-aged woman.Tom becomes the over-haunted poetic soul.Jim functions in three level-for Laura he is an illusion of her high school days,for Amanda he is the way to get back to her nostalgic South,and for Tom he is the failure of the American dream.Thus we find through “plastic’ images The Glass Menageriebecomes a drama that functions in different layers.

Music is used often in The Glass Menagerie, both to emphasize themes and to enhance the drama. Both the extra-diagetic and the diagetic music often provide commentary on what is going on in the play. For example, the Paradise Dance Hall plays a piece entitled “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” while Tom is talking about the approach of World War II.

The lighting in the play is not realistic. In keeping with the atmosphere of memory, the stage is dim. Shafts of light are focused on selected areas or actors, sometimes in contradistinction to what is the apparent center.The light upon Laura is a peculiar pristine clarity such as light used in early religious portraits of female saints or madonnas.

Through The Glass Menagerie Williams tries to present a form that is more than just a picture of reality: he insists that his ideal theatre make use of all the stage arts to generate a theatrical experience greater than mere Realism.His cinematic dramaturgy as well as painterly and sculptural setting makes his 

The Glass Menageriemost successful.