Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage Directed by Tim Bond – Hakim Hamid The Play Meet Vera Stark is based on the Main Character, Vera Stark’s rise to stardom. The play starts with Gloria Mitchell, a film star known as America's Little Sweetie Pie, rehearsing her lines with Vera, her maid, for a Southern epic called, “The Belle of New Orleans”. Gloria was determined to get the role of main character and Vera wants to also land a role as the maid in the film. Gloria is both worried and nervous that she wouldn’t make the part while Vera is in dilemma whether Gloria would mention her to the director. The final scene had Gloria throwing a dinner party. The people who attended included Vera and Lottie as maids, the studio producer Fredrick Slasvick, director Maximillian Von Oster, with Anne Mae, coming in as the director’s date, and Leroy Barksdale, a jazz musician who also was Maximillian’s chauffer and has interests in Vera. Maximillian explains how he wants “The Belle of New Orleans” to be as real as possible that would include slavery and the tragic negro plight. Vera and Lottie both acted out the part as an …show more content…
impromptu audition to be part of the film. The Act ended with the question of whether Vera would get the role in the movie or not. Act 2 takes place in 2003, but would jump back in time a few times in the form of video. The act starts out with the introduction of Herb Forrester, an intellectual film geek, Carmen Levy-Green, a college professor and Afua Assata Ejoba, a lesbian slam poet who would discuss Vera Stark’s rise to fame and fall later on in her career. The film “The Belle of New Orleans” was shown in the beginning, and continued with an interview of Vera Stark in 1973 that includes Brad donovan, Peter Rhys-Davies and Gloria Mitchell. The plot continues with the watchers analysing the interview and deducting facts about Vera Stark’s disappearance and her contribution to the society. They also argued about Vera and Gloria’s relationship throughout their lives together. The play ends with a showing of how Vera and Gloria discovered the way to perform their last lines. The main objective of Vera Stark throughout Act 1 of the play was to rise to stardom and become a well known actress.
She faced many obstacles that got in the way of reaching her dreams, which includes, Gloria’s lack of interest in helping Vera to get her into the acting industry. As a way to overcome this, Vera kept on pleading Gloria to suggest her name to the director in hopes of getting a role as a maid. Another obstacle Vera faced was the high competition in becoming an actress and the lack of exposure to directors or producers, which put her efforts to a halt. Vera’s action was to perform an impromptu audition in front of the director of “The Bells of New Orleans”, Maximillion. In her performance, she faked her origins to accommodate the needs of the director, which was to have a realistic movie which portrayed the struggle of African Americans in
slavery. Vera Stark experienced various beat changes that affected the flow of the story. A beat change is defined as a change of moment for the characters in the play. The most noticeable beat change to me for Vera was in Act 1 where Vera argued with Gloria about how she did not put enough effort in her rehearsal for the audition. The atmosphere was tense until Gloria successfully calmed Vera down. They then happily continued their rehearsal with both parties in a joyous mood. Other than that, in Act 2, during the interview Vera experienced a large beat change when both Brad and Gloria praised her performance in “The Belle of New Orleans” and how it received criticism for the African American actress to say the last lines. Vera became agitated as she argues that she opened a new door for Hollywood and aided in the rights gained for African Americans. This topic was later discussed by the analysts.
Alice Neel’s painting Suzanne Moss was created in 1962 using oil paint on canvas. As the title suggests, the painting depicts a woman’s portrait. Now resigning in the Chazen Museum in Madison, WI, this portrait of a woman lunging is notable for the emotional intensity it provokes as well as her expressionistic use of brush strokes and color. The scene is set by a woman, presumably Suzanne Moss, dressed in dull back and blues lounging across a seat, staring off to the side, avoiding eye contact with the viewer. The unique style and technique of portraiture captures the woman’s piercing gaze and alludes to the interior emotions of the subject. In Suzanne Moss, Alice Neel uses desultory brush strokes combined with contrast of warm and cool shadows
At the start of the play she was described as a girl who is very
In the play, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark”, the two main characters, Vera Stark and Anna Mae play a significate role in the plays main theme of racial discrimination. The choice they made to decide to lie about their race came from the fact that racial discrimination was an issue and they knew they wouldn’t be looked at for a major role in a play. I found this to be very sad that they couldn’t be themselves and had to lie about who they truly are. This play also brings to light the issue that many people face in today’s society of conforming to society’s image of being the perfect American.
Interview Essay - Emelie Konold Emelie Konold was born on July 25, 1924. She enjoys keeping active by meeting new people and being with friends. She also enjoys taking classes at Saddleback College, and sewing. Emelie defines happiness as a pleasant feeling of joy and wellbeing. Her definition has evolved over the years.
Identity in Contemporary American Drama – Between Reality and Illusion Tennessee Williams was one of the most important playwrights in the American literature. He is famous for works such as “The Glass Menagerie” (1944), “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947) or “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)”. As John S. Bak claims: “Streetcar remains the most intriguing and the most frequently analyzed of Williams’ plays.” In the lines that follow I am going to analyze how the identity of Blanche DuBois, the female character of his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire”, is shaped. Firstly, we learn from an interview he gave, that the character of Blanche has been inspired from a member of his family.
During the 1940’s, there was a huge shift from the old southern fashion to a new and more abrasive style, which was caused by the fall of slavery. This caused many of the southerners to loss their homes due to the lack of free labor supplied to them through slavery. This loss and human desire for something better has been the theme of many plays with authors such as Tennessee Williams to take on these topics. In the play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams contrasts the two settings of Elysian Fields and Belle Reve to emphasis the impact of loss and desire. Both Elysian Fields and Belle Reve are symbols for the new south of reality and old south of disillusion which can be see though the details of the play.
Stella and Blanche are two important female characters in Tennessee Williams' "poetic tragedy," A Streetcar Named Desire. Although they are sisters, their blood relationship suggests other similarities between the two women. They are both part of the final generation of a once aristocratic but now moribund family. Both exhibit a great deal of culture and sensitivity, and as a result, both seem out of place in Elysian Fields. As Miller (45) notes, "Beauty is shipwrecked on the rock of the world's vulgarity."
Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire is a play wrought with intertwining conflicts between characters. A drama written in eleven scenes, the play takes place in New Orleans over a nine-month period. The atmosphere is noisy, with pianos playing in the distance from bars in town. It is a crowded area of the city, causing close relations with neighbors, and the whole town knowing your business. Their section of the split house consists of two rooms, a bathroom, and a porch. This small house is not fit for three people. The main characters of the story are Stella and Stanley Kowalski, the home owners, Blanche DuBois, Stella’s sister, Harold Mitchell (Mitch), Stanley’s friend, and Eunice and Steve Hubbell, the couple that lives upstairs. Blanche is the protagonist in the story because all of the conflicts involve her. She struggles with Stanley’s ideals and with shielding her past.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” gives its audience an in-depth glimpse into the arduous rebirth of the United States following the Second World War, from the perspectives of Stanley, a man who is desperately and unsuccessfully trying to hold on to the societal norms of the pre-war world, Blanche, a woman scarred and tormented by a series of consecutive tragedies, who demands more than a lifetime of inferiority, and her sister, Stella, Stanley's wife, who knows that life has so much more to offer, but has become addicted to the danger and thrill of her abusive relationship with her husband. After Blanche loses her family’s plantation, Belle Reve, she is forced to move away from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, and leave behind her life of ease and and upper class gentry, to live with Stella and Stanley Kowalski, in the heart of New Orleans, and by doing so, Blanche unknowingly unleashed a beast in Stanley, and herself. The two of them were essentially polar opposites, as Blanche was born into a world of comfort and old Mississippi money, and Stanley was born into poverty, forced to work as a manual laborer in the French Quarter of New Orleans, thus forming a looming, inevitable quarrel between them. Stella,
Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most popular plays in American history. The play contains this theme of Old South versus New South where old southern ideals and way of life clashes against newly formed ideals of the late 19th and early 20th century. The distinctions between the Old South’s emphasis on tradition, social class, and segregation versus the New South’s emphasis on hard work can be seen throughout the play. It is manifested in the main characters of the play. Blanche DuBois’s civilized and polished nature makes her a symbol of the Old South while Stanley Kowalski’s brutish, direct, and defying nature represents the New South. Tennessee Williams uses the characters of his play to present a picture of the social, gender role, and behavior distinctions that existed between the Old South versus the New South. Furthermore, the two settings provided in the play, Belle Reve and Elysian Fields can also be seen as different representations of the Old versus the New with the way both places are fundamentally different.
The performances being compared in this critique are By the Way, Meet Vera Stark originally directed by Jo Boney, and the film Chicago directed by Rob Marshall. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark premiered Off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre on May 9th, 2011. The University of Washington Drama Department produced its own version of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, directed by their School of Drama Faculty member Tim Bond and located at the Meany Studio Theatre. The film Chicago, set in the 1920’s, came out in 2002. It was streamed on TV in the evening on October 28th, 2017. Throughout this paper, these two performances will be compared from the perspective of an audience member based on the elements of live versus film performances. Analysis will
The film crew enhanced the theme of lying through their lighting choices. Specifically found in the written play, when Stanley confronts Blanche about losing a “piece of property” (Williams 32) named Belle Reve. In the film adaptation, Blanche pulls Stanley into the darkness to study the papers. On more than one occasion Blanche exclaims she takes comfort in the da...
Tennessee Williams gives insight into three ordinary lives in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which is set in the mid-1930’s in New Orleans. The main characters in the play are Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. All three of these characters suffer from personalities that differentiate each of them to great extremes. Because of these dramatic contrarieties in attitudes, there are mounting conflicts between the characters throughout the play. The principal conflict lies between Blanche and Stanley, due to their conflicting ideals of happiness and the way things “ought to be”.
“As a profoundly deaf woman, my experiences have shown me that the impossible is indeed possible.”- Heather Whitestone. It was this attitude that led Heather Whitestone to be crowned Miss America, despite her deafness. Whitestone has inspired and gained the respect of not only the deaf community, but also the hearing community. Her loss of hearing has not stopped her from achieving her goals and dreams.
In the opening scene, Williams designed Stella to be the complete contrast of her sister, Blanche. Stella was a genuine, disarming woman with simple dreams, her name reflecting that of her likeable nature—extraordinarily bright. Stella’s benign and diplomatic nature is especially highlighted when compared with her older sister, portraying her in a positive light and gaining sympathy from the audience. This character is juxtaposed with the false dreams of Blanche to highlight the attainable, realistic dreams that Williams’ believed Americans could