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Regarded by many as one of the most important plays in the history of American theater, A Streetcar Named Desire opened at Albuquerque Little Theatre (224 San Pasquale Ave. SW) for the first time last week and will continue its run from Friday, March 14 until March 23. Fourteen actors including understudies make up the cast of the play, many of whom are making their ALT stage debut. And because the play deals with themes such as abuse and violence, ALT utilized an intimacy specialist for the production.
“It’s about broken and flawed people who hide behind an armor of illusion in order to navigate a fragile and often brutal world,” director Theresa Carson says. “Desire and sex, and how these are used to find belonging and connection, play a large role in that survival instinct.”
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire follows the tragic trajectory of Blanche DuBois, who is played by Madison Dodd. Blanche is a formerly successful schoolteacher running from demons in her past, and Dodd is well-tailored for the role — she’s a schoolteacher in Albuquerque when she’s not performing. Culture shock is the least of Blanche’s worries when she leaves the urbane environment of her small town in Mississippi to share a dingy New Orleans apartment with her sister Stella Kowalski and Stella’s husband Stanley. As tensions build in the unstable household, Stanley — who has a history of physically and verbally abusing Stella — turns his viciousness on the fragile Blanche.
“Everyone has a picture in their head of this play and these characters,” Dodd says. “The plot has twists and turns that you don’t expect, and it’s both tragic and heartwarming. It lands really well with audiences even if they’ve seen it before.”
Blanche’s physical, psychological and emotional vulnerability drives much of the story’s conflict, but actresses who play Blanch may feel a similar vulnerability during rehearsals and on stage due to the play’s difficult subject matter. Because the performance includes controversial elements such as strong physical and sexual violence, rape, domestic abuse and alcoholism, ALT has included an age recommendation for patrons ages 14 and older.
“There’s quite a bit of intimate contact, and almost all of it is very loaded,” intimacy specialist Celena Cox says. “There’s a lot to carry around and unpack with that. So what I can do is come in and really talk to each actor individually about where they are in their heads about the material and how to get us to where the director wants us to be while maintaining everybody’s mental health and their boundaries.”
Cox began intimacy training in 2019 and was the intimacy specialist for the cast of Dracula, a Comedy of Terrors at ALT in the fall, but says her role in that play was “a much lighter touch than it was for Streetcar.” She says the very first thing she does with any creative job is a thorough deep dive into the material before preparing the cast for potentially overwhelming scenes. Next, the cast participates in “boundary practice” and establishes a word actors can use as a “tap-out” or “pause button” in case they need to stop the scene. During rehearsals for A Streetcar Named Desire, the tap-out word was “parsley,” and Cox says the cast used it frequently.
“It gives actors a mechanism to halt things and say, ‘Okay, I’m not in a good space for this. Can we reassess?’” she says. “Another thing we don’t often think about is that the cast is still experiencing the scene [after it is over]. They’re in the rehearsal space or they’re backstage hearing it, and so everybody involved in the production needs that mechanism.”
Cox says it’s valuable to have someone whose focus is intimacy during productions such as A Streetcar Named Desire because these specialists are trained in techniques that ensure once rehearsal is done, the cast leaves their characters on the stage and doesn’t take the material home with them. She also says good directors like Carson — who has a background in stage combat — use careful layering, blocking and choreography to create an almost mechanical, step-by-step rehearsal process and check in on every single actor during every single stage of the production.
“In the non-consensual scene between Stanley and Blanche, it is clear what is happening,” Cox says. “Theresa [Carson] did not want to obfuscate it in any way. She thinks it’s an important part of the script and an important part of all three main characters’ storylines. And so if parents do want to take their kids, it’s a conversation they should be prepared to have.”
A Streetcar Named Desire closes its run on Sunday, March 23. For performance times and tickets, visit https://albuquerquelittletheatre.org/.
A Streetcar Named Desire
March 14 – March 23
Albuquerque Little Theatre
224 San Pasquale Ave. SW
Tickets and showtimes
$32-$35