Glass Menagerie Essay

The Glass Menagerie, a play written by Tennessee Williams, is a play that exemplifies the coursework of THET110. Written shortly after the Little Theatre Movement, The Glass Menagerie is a post-modernism piece that can be used as an example to demonstrate multiple different theatre techniques and concepts, such as breaking the fourth wall and Brecht’s idea of alienation. By telling the audience what to look for through its use of the screen, Williams helped to take away some of the suspense so that people could focus on why the events on stage were occurring. Tennessee Williams, helped to change the course of American Theatre in that it allowed future playwrights to be more creative and to allow them to experiment with involving the audience, as witnessed through plays such as Sandwalk and Everything in the Garden.
By calling the play a “memory play”, Williams gives himself the ability to incorporate more theatrical concepts into the play, such as the breaking of the fourth wall through the narrator, Tom. The play begins by Tom walking on stage and casually addressing the audience.   Williams breaks the fourth wall as if it is something that should be natural, almost expected of his characters. In doing so, Williams creates a better connection to his audience and helps the audience to better understand the play. When breaking the fourth wall, the character Tom explains background information to the audience, such as the social background of the play or explaining the reasoning behind some of his mother’s actions. Williams did not want this play just to be something that the audience only got emotionally involved in, he wanted his audiences to truly think about what as going on in the play and figure out how they could change it.
One of the first things in the script of The Glass Menagerie is a cue for music to start and for words to appear on a screen. In this time period, the use of the screen was still fairly uncommon. The screen was used to display images...