Frame/Works : A Streetcar Named Desire
25 March 2015 Frame/Works : A Streetcar Named Desire
HWS Theatre continues its Frame/Works series onFriday April 10 4:30-5:30 in Coxe 7. Guest scholar Associate Professor of English Anna Creadick will present a talk titledLocating Desire in Streetcar.
Situating this 1948 play in the context of a shifting national conversations about sexuality after World War II, this talk takes up the question of desire in A Streetcar Named Desire. Why is desire the title force for this play? Where is desire located? How is it gendered, embodied, or dis-embodied? The answers to these questions reveal a literary work that was both revolutionary and problematic in its rendering of the erotics of postwar American life. The formal talk will be followed by a series of brief student interrogations of the play, from Creadicks spring 2016 Sexuality and American Literature class.
Creadicks talk is free and open to the public.Frame/Works attendees are encouraged to see A Streetcar Named Desire that evening. Tickets will be available at the HWS College Store and Area Records and Music.
Creadick, chair of the English Department, writes on 20th century American literature and culture, especially the midcentury period, gender/sexuality, and southern writers. Her monograph Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America was published by UMass Press in 2010. Her most recent publication, Reading Faulkners Readers, will appear in Faulkner and History (U of Mississippi Press) in 2016.
Frame/Works is a program designed to draw connections between scholarly examination and artistic practice. Scholars are invited to present their research on a play, playwright, historical moment, genre or style in a pre-show lecture prior to a performance. Following the performance, audience members are invited to participate in a post-show talkback with members of the cast and creative team. Taken together, the pre-show lecture and the post-show talkback, frame a work of theatrical art.Following the April 10 performance of A Streetcar Named Desire, audience members are invited to stay for a post-show talk-back with members of the cast and production team.