Performance Context

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  • Created by: Percabeth
  • Created on: 27-05-18 14:23
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  • Performance Context
    • 1951 Kazan film
      • Vivien Leigh was a Hollywood celeb who'd won an Oscar for the Southern Belle Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind
        • GWTW's most famous location, Tara, the fabled plantation which Scarlett adores, would've been the iconic template evoked in minds of most of W's contemporaries with every mention of BR
        • people have speculated TW had Leigh in mind when writing B
        • in some ways, fundamental contrast between Brando & Leigh as practitioners of their craft echoes unbridgeable gulf between B & Stan.
      • Jessica Tandy who played B in original Broadway stage production not a big enough box office star to headline and edgy production dealing with ****, promiscuity & homosexuality
        • Vivien Leigh was a Hollywood celeb who'd won an Oscar for the Southern Belle Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wind
          • GWTW's most famous location, Tara, the fabled plantation which Scarlett adores, would've been the iconic template evoked in minds of most of W's contemporaries with every mention of BR
          • people have speculated TW had Leigh in mind when writing B
          • in some ways, fundamental contrast between Brando & Leigh as practitioners of their craft echoes unbridgeable gulf between B & Stan.
      • as to a whole gen. of cinemagoers, Leigh was the archetypal belle of US pop culture, her wrecked & ruined turn as TW's belle gone bad seems to capture something of the apparently inevitable decline of the South itself
      • Marlon Brando as Stanley
      • at 1st mocked by traditionalists for his 'mumbling' delivery but was instantly acclaimed by younger gen. as a groundbreaking new talent
        • was a method actor
      • Manchester performance
        • whole performance done on a green floor
        • perhaps to symbolise that the action of the entire play is being played out on the poker table
          • esp. powerful when consider "nothing belongs belong on a poker table but cards, chips & beer"
          • poker table is representative of Stan.'s world that B not wanted in/ able to survive in
        • had a woman of mixed race playing Ste.
          • Theatre Clwyd performance
          • sense of she's moved forward into the 'new' world of US
            • NO far more multicultural whereas BR & Old South v white
      • Theatre Clwyd performance
    • during final scene, the set that made up the apartment was gradually taken away
      • representative of B's mental state falling apart

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