snowbird: a colloquial name for a coked out prostitute

Period pieces that are staged today can still hold cultural relevance. Tennessee Williams’ second full length play, Fugitive Kind, was recently staged at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This piece was written in and based on life in St. Louis in the late 1930s. Centered on a love story between an orphaned girl who was raised in a flophouse and a smooth talking east coast bank robber, the play finds itself ending with the first desolate snowfall of a Midwest winter.

As with any period piece that is done outside of its original time period, the play struggled to find contemporary themes and messages. There were themes of a small town guy afraid to make it in a larger world. The play also had a character who went to school, and returned expelled. He was a writer for the daily school newspaper. He ultimately was expelled from college and lost his scholarship. He wrote a piece in the newspaper that focused on the over militarization of society and the overwhelming influence of the government. His critics labeled him a communist and sent him packing. He returned home to a disappointed father. It’s not hard to find a contemporary theme in this situation. Many parents today struggle to find ways to put their children through college, and this served as an interesting topic of conversation amongst coffee tables during intermission.

There was also a lot of drug usage and prostitution presented in the piece. It is always shocking to a young audience to see how drug usage in America did not start in the 1980s. The use of cocaine was alluded to at many different points in the play. The awareness of drug use at such an early point in our nation’s history can only lend itself to bringing up a larger awareness in the current state of our social climate.

However, by noting the venue that the play was housed in can bring up some interesting points. The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is an excellent venue for concerts, plays as well as many other types of performances. However, there is a social stigma that surrounds the building and the performances that occur within it. Within the community, not many residents attend plays at the Krannert Center. The center has been fighting against a predetermined notion that it is too high class and not welcoming to people of all economic backgrounds. It could be a reason of the University’s negative relationship with the community, unless dealing with sporting events. Knowing first hand that the Krannert Center is trying to break down this stereotype both in marketing and in programming. Also many of the messages that could be striking to the youth, such as drug and prostitution slander are mostly missed by the youth. The average age of attendants to Krannert Center plays must be near or above 40. At both performances that I attended of this show, as well as numerous others, I rarely see people under the age of 18. Unless of course the center is specifically targeting the youth with a specific event or having a field trip that invites local schools. Sadly, the theatre, or at least this one, is not a family friendly environment.

The casting of this production can also be a distancing factor in the overall quality of the show. Needless to say that this performance was cast with college aged students within the theatre department. That is not to say that the quality of the acting poor of students is low, but rather casting a widely aged show with students portraying characters two to three times their age makes the show much less believable. However, the audience is knowing of this fact well before they enter the acting arena. It may lead to some laughable moments in the production, but it does not completely distance the audience. If this show were cast with say 12 year olds, the audience would go in with a different set of expectations.

On another note, the play is chock full of stereotypes. The stereotypes that were employed in this piece were intentional. They may have not been originally written to seem as abrasive as they were in the contemporary showing. However, they may have been directed to be more so in the plays original production. Without doing extensive research, it is hard to say what the original intention of the stereotypes employed by the playwright were used for. Some examples of stereotypes include a southern man named Texas, lower class ‘hicks’, a prostitute, police officers and an older Jewish immigrant. It is important to keep in mind that this particular piece has not been staged more than a handful of times, let alone since its initial conception. Therefore, historically speaking, this was a great show to see. Based on its rarity alone, it was a real gift both for the performers to act in, and for the audience to see.