The Glass Menagerie described the lives in a family of a single mother and her two children in the middle 20 century, and Jacob and I chose scene six in act I and scene eight in act II to act out the changes in the relationship between the mother, Amanda, and her son, Tom. I played Amanda, and Jacob played the son, Tom. The performance went quite well.
After reading it, I found out the relationship between Amanda and Tom is dynamic. When the time pass, their attitude toward each other is changing. For the audience perspective, the relationship between Amanda and Tom was awkward but peaceful at least at first. Tom is enduring his mother, but he still respects to his mother. Amanda notices Tom's impatience to her, but she does not know the reason, so she decides to leave the trouble alone and treats Tom as the past. Their relationship has forcefully remained between Amanda and Tom's silence until the end of the book, Tom leaving the house. As an audience, we would like to think they both can be blamed. Tom should understand his mother's care and thoughts. Amanda was thinking the whole family, but Tom's attention is more toward his interest and his development. On the other hand, Amanda is also an egoist. We can see that she does what she thinks without respecting others' dream and ambitions. Therefore, they are the same kind of person. However, for Tom and Amanda's perspectives, they all blame on the other. When I played Amanda, I would not only like to find the changes in Amanda's attitude but would also like to find out what Amanda thought when she changes the attitude toward Tom.
Amanda feels Tom's disagreement and dissatisfaction, but she still keeps doing the annoying things. I believe there are two reasons push her to keep her annoying personality. Firstly, she is sure that she is making the right choice for Tom. Amanda thought the writing could not earn enough money to support an entire family, so she restricts Tom write. It is a truth that it is so difficult to live by relying on words. Therefore, compared to the reality, Amanda thinks working hard in the warehouse can earn basic financial support, and the job in the warehouse is more stable than writing. Secondly, the past of Amanda makes a great difference from the present she lived. Amanda's past is full of glories according to her memorization. Therefore, compared to the bleak present life, she spends her most of time on hiding in her past and escaping the reality. Then, even though Amanda feels Tom's dissatisfaction, she has no time and is tired to face the problem. As a result, she is forced to handle the family as a single mother, and she is also living in her fantasy as an outspoken romantic woman. The conflict makes her complicated, and I believe living between the fantasy and reality will bring a lot of reluctant feeling to the lives.
When I played Amanda, I continued putting layers in the character building. The first layer would be the behavior and appearance, which is as simple as possible. Amanda is so outspoken that she usually talks without thinking, and her words hurt Tom and Laura. Her behavior gives me the first impression of her, childish egotism. All the kids and teenagers will somehow feel like the world is moving around them, and then they talk whatever they want without thinking about the influence or effect to others. However, adults will not do it because when they grew up, they will be independent and socialize with a lot of people. They have to cooperate with others. Amanda in the book does not seem like she is a cooperative person, even though she looks socialized. To show the childishness, I walked brightly in the first scene we played and heavily in the last scene. The second layer will be her inner thought. I acted out her contradiction by reacting to Tom and adding the pauses between the sentences. In addition, facial expression can also help to improve the contradictions. For example, when Amanda speaks the words she does not mean to, I can the first standstill speaking in a louder voice with affirmed facial expression, but then I realized I might say the wrong words, so I looked away and frowned for a few seconds.
For the staging, we set up easily. The first scene is the same as the second scene. The differences between the two scenes are that first is happened more in the fire escape, and the second happened in the living room. Moreover, since we did not have any monologue, we did not set a strong spotlight and change the staging.
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