While I think New Orleans is too small a town and she would have opened up shop perhaps in Atlanta instead, this perspective on Blanche as a survivor breathed a new life into the work for me. Williams’, it’s said, took a moment, thought, and replied that she would have seduced a number of the orderlies in the asylum, got herself out, and opened a shop in the French Quarter-just as she had tried to recruit Stella to do during the play. Years after the play had been written, the actress playing Blanche in the UK premiere asked dear Tenn what happens to our heroine after curtain. And the only one whom he wouldn’t let fail. There’s always this unspoken implication that somehow, Blanche deserves to suffer because she tries to survive.īut if you look at the work, and you consider the realities of Blanche’s life and time, this is a misinformed and cold read on one of Williams most famous characters the one he himself identified the most with. Instead, we dance around the fact that Stanley rapes Blanche while Stella gives birth to his baby, and instead we focus on how Blanche was a whore. Just the fact that when you say “Streetcar Named Desire”, most think of Marlon Brando and not it’s two starring sisters should be enough to tell us that we haven’t let Blanche be the lead of her own story. No wonder I’ve avoided the work for nearly a lifetime-Just the fact that so many of us think of Blanche in less than compassionate terms should tell you everything. I am wholly disappointed with the short shrift Blanche is given by critics, in acting classes, and in our collective memory. So when David, months before the festival, assigned Sandi Holloway to direct me, I realized I wasn’t just doing a little something extra I was writing a whole-ass burlesque play. For the first time in my life, I was seeing Blanche from Blanche’s perspective. And learning to sympathize with her hell, even empathize in ways. And so, for months, I spent time developing these acts and getting to know Blanche. David was also struck with the idea that I’d do a classic vaudeville Spider hand puppet act, giving a showgirl wink to the hotel Blanche finds herself in on the road to New Orleans-”The Tarantula Hotel” (later misremembered or misdirected in Williams’ classic as “The Flamingo”). And later on, my Straight Jacket Striptease, which gives Blanche’s end in the play a triumphant twist. It started with the seeds of acts I have been performing for years-first, a reverse striptease that seemed fairly straightforward to start, and ending with a sadness not usually presented within burlesque but all too familiar for Tennessee’s women. Lagniappe is how they say “A Little Something Extra” in New Orleans, and while I knew that Blanche was always extra, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And, since I was going to be there anyway, and since theater festival resources are, shall we say… stretched, he suggested I also plan to perform some of my burlesque work as a lagniappe presentation. Then, during our first year of Covid, 2020, my mentor and friend David Kaplan hired me to teach a burlesque workshop as part of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. I thought I had done my dad right, writing off the southern epic with a know-it-all eye roll, and accepting the narrative that maybe it’s Stanley who is the victim, after all. I wanted nothing to do with the spoiled, hysterical, entitled, lying and faded debutante who represented everything my loving but misogynist father taught me are the definition of what it means to be a Woman. I’ve spent the majority of my near-forty years on this planet avoiding Blanche DuBois and A Streetcar Named Desire. In addition to Lefty Lucy’s Blanche, the show features a 2-person Greek-inspired chorus - the clowns of a classic vaudeville and our guides, providing context and commentary throughout the show as well as a guest vocalist, performing 3 songs that mirror Blanche’s arc and emphasize the harm our societal roles and structures have on all of us. Opening one scene before A Streetcar Named Desire, with her stay at the Tarantula hotel on the road to visit Stella in New Orleans, and following her arc through what happens after she visits the asylum, this Vaudeville is told through a series of variety acts, including puppetry, striptease, drag, live music and sideshow arts, creating a narrative experience that would make even Tennessee blush. In this surprising romp, writer and burlesque artist Lefty Lucy explores the B-side of this infamous debutante with a perspective of joy and resilience rarely allowed for one of Williams’ most famous heroines. In Fall of 2021, Lefty Lucy premiered A PEEP SHOW NAMED DESIRE (formerly Tennessee’s Latest Peep Show) in the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival.
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