Director's Note

"The play is memory." Through the poet/ narrator, Tom Wingfield, Williams pieces together the fragments of his past. Clearly this play is autobiographical, but to describe it as a factual record would be to miss its essence entirely. Williams does not intend simply to draw us inward to his own consciousness; instead, he wishes us to share in his struggle for self-understanding and thereby move outward to a fuller recognition of the nature of all numan experience.

The Glass Menagerie is a magical play. It gives you "truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." In delicate tones of pathos and humor, it reveals a remembered world, intensely relived. Thought Williams uses fragments from his own shattered past, his play strikes chords of recognition in all of us.

In working on this production, we have come to know fully the artistry of Tennessee Williams. He has created a masterpiece in miniature -- in John Gassner's words, "a little play with a large soul." Its perfection in structure, characterization, and language makes it a joy to do, and, we hope, a pleasure to see.