Previously on The Jukebox at The Diner: “Back To School”
I was merely an observer this week in class. I didn’t have anything to share, mostly because I spent some time on Volume Four - "Night Shift", which I knew was coming, I didn’t expect it would be last week. That’s how it goes with this story. It certainly lets me know when it’s time to write. For instance, I wasn’t going to work on this until tomorrow, but…
Okay, a huge pile of clean laundry on my bed needs folding, so maybe it’s not always the story.
I was listening to the group talking about the tone and style of Tennesse Williams. One of the writers in the group had shared a pitch deck for a 1940s wartime take on Hamlet, and someone mentioned how the tone felt like Williams’
This is where taking this class is sometimes just paying attention and listening.
Taken from Writing the Nation: A Concise Introduction to American Literature 1865-Present via the Creative Commons License
Tennessee Williams’s style is often referred to as poetic realism or poetic expressionism. Expressionism is a part of the modernist movement in art and literature, where the expression of emotion or emotional experience takes precedence over the materialistic depiction of physical reality. Williams’s plays typically contain stage directions that call not for a physical setting but for a creation of mood. Physical setting is often altered, augmented, or distorted in order to create a mood or to suggest an emotion. Music, lighting, and screen legends are used symbolically to create this kind of effect. In terms of characterization, Williams’s plays often center on misfits or outcasts—outsiders who are often very sensitive and completely out of tune with contemporary times.
With that note above, I share the working manuscript and the first page of the script for The Jukebox at The Diner Halloween Special - Good For Your Soul. It sets the tone.
Thank you for reading, until next week.
=j