MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The
cast and crew of MTSU Theatre’s final
spring 2017 production don’t mind that some audiences may be unfamiliar with the
strangeness of kin that permeates the classic “A Streetcar Named Desire” April 6-9 in Tucker Theatre.
“The crazy thing is that college students, they don’t know this play.
They didn’t grow up with the movie; it’s famous to their parents but wasn’t to
them,” says Murfreesboro sophomore Conner
McCabe, who’s taking on the role of Stanley
Kowalski, one of American theater’s most iconic and most challenging male
characters.
“By limiting ourselves to the standard way of doing ‘Streetcar,’ it’s
actually much more freeing to us to tell the story to a generation that hasn’t
heard it and maybe needs to hear it.
… Stanley was a ‘normal husband’ back then. He’s in a lot of places now. You
probably know a Stanley.”
Advance tickets, available at http://www.mtsuarts.com,
are $10 general admission and $5 for K-12 students and senior citizens 55 and
older. Curtain times are 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, April 6-8, and 2 p.m.
Sunday, April 9.
Tickets also will be available at the Tucker Theatre box office 90
minutes before curtain times. You can watch a preview at http://youtu.be/wMJxVzpyCqg, and a full listing of the “Streetcar”
cast and crew is available at http://ow.ly/hZla30arsRX.
MTSU’s also offering a special lecture, “Catching a 70-Year-Old
Streetcar: Why Williams’ Play Still Matters,” at 5 p.m. opening night, April 6,
in Tucker Theatre featuring MTSU English professor and Tennessee Williams
scholar Robert Bray. The lecture is
free and open to the public, and attendees will receive a free ticket voucher
good for one performance through the show’s run.
Megan Castleberry, a
Cleveland, Tennessee, junior, who’s portraying Stella Kowalski, realized that playwright Williams was making a clear
point in creating her character as a shrinking violet alongside her hothouse
magnolia sister Blanche DuBois, played
by Knoxville senior Hannah Ewing.
“She’s the person who sees bad things happen and doesn’t do anything
about them,” Castleberry said of Stella. “I think Williams was trying to say to
not be like her.
“When you see someone who is hurt or see someone who is struggling in a
situation, you should not sit aside and wait and make sure it’ll be okay but speak
up and take action … especially when you feel like you want to stay quiet.”
Ewing, who’s tackling the white-gloved, powdered Blanche before she
graduates in May, said she’s enjoying the high-speed test created by presenting
the classic drama during a first for Tucker Theatre: three major plays in a
single semester.
“I think you can kind of get stuck … [and] not allow yourself to push
past a way you’ve been doing a certain way of acting,” Ewing said.
“I can push myself in this role to a professional level in an
undergraduate setting. This [four-week turnaround] has presented the challenge
of putting a show up fast and really diving in deep, not only into the
character but into the background of the character.”
Stage manager Justin Dixon, a
Lafayette, Tennessee, sophomore who joked that he “only watches the show,” said
being a part of a classic is “an extreme privilege.”
“It’s presented so many opportunities for everyone, whether you’re an
actor or on the design team or whatever other role,” he said. “There’s so much
you can do with it. There’s so much to learn. It’s such a well-known piece of
theater that I feel everyone should experience ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ at
least once in their lives.”
For more information about the MTSU Theatre production, visit http://www.mtsuarts.com.
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