0:00

I'm Christina Cottorucci, and this season on

0:03

Slow Burn. It's called Proposition 6.

0:05

The Briggs Initiative. John Briggs is going

0:08

to fire every gay and lesbian school

0:10

teacher in California. With so

0:12

much at stake, young people became

0:15

activists. We can't let this happen

0:17

in California. And activists became leaders.

0:20

My name is Harvey Milk, and I'm

0:22

here to recruit you. Slow Burn,

0:24

Season 9. Gaze against Briggs.

0:26

Out now, wherever you listen.

0:31

This is a CBC Podcast. Hey,

0:37

I'm Tom Power. You're listening to Q. How

0:39

familiar are you with A Streetcar Named Desire?

0:42

The play by Tennessee Williams, since its debut in

0:44

the mid-1940s, has become

0:46

a staple of theater all around the world.

0:49

Now, if you're not familiar with it, it's set

0:51

in the 40s in New Orleans. It's seen as

0:53

a bit of an allegory for America at the

0:55

time. You know, a clash of cultures, struggle for

0:58

identity, chaos within families. In

1:00

particular, the relationship between Blanche Dubois

1:02

and her brother-in-law, Stanley. So,

1:05

a few years ago, the award-winning Canadian director,

1:07

Wayney Mungeshia, brought Streetcar into

1:09

the future, staging a version of the play

1:11

for audiences at Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre. And

1:14

it was called one of the

1:16

best theater productions in Canada of

1:19

the decade. Now it's back.

1:21

Wayney and Soulpepper are re-staging A Streetcar

1:23

Named Desire. And we asked Wayney

1:26

to come into the studio, and we were happy.

1:28

She said yes to talk a little bit about

1:30

Canadian theater, about the legacy of Tennessee Williams, and

1:32

why A Streetcar Named Desire still matters today. Here's

1:35

our conversation. How are you? Good,

1:37

Tom. Thanks for having me. Nice to have you

1:39

here. How's it all been going? How's the staging been going? Good,

1:43

good. We're in the final. We just

1:45

had our first tech run yesterday. It's

1:47

been really...it feels like a gift to go back into it.

1:50

Yeah? Yeah. Why

1:52

made you want to go back into it? I

1:54

mean, you know, as you just

1:56

described it, it is a masterwork. There's many, many layers.

2:00

you know, the theater has, you can't

2:03

sort of cut and continue to edit,

2:05

you have to, the show must go on at a

2:07

certain time. And so I think we dug

2:09

in quite a bit, but there's still so much more

2:11

to find. And that's, we've all been

2:13

really enjoying that this time. Where did you

2:16

come across it first? Was it the movie or the? The

2:18

play, no, the play, yeah. Good for you.

2:21

I read it into the. I'm just

2:23

thinking about me back home in Newfoundland. I came across

2:25

it on the Simpsons parody of it, so I can't

2:27

see that much about it. I still haven't seen.

2:30

What's the matter, honey? Are you

2:32

lost? I'm looking for my sister

2:35

Stella. It's mom. Huh? My

2:37

name is Blanche DuBois. My

2:39

cast is talks about it a lot. They're like, I don't

2:42

think you should. No, the street garden and desire, the

2:44

musical. Yeah, the musicals maybe. Okay, so you came across the

2:46

play first. Do you remember how old you were? Actually,

2:49

it was just before I decided to direct it.

2:51

It was like two years before I decided to

2:53

direct it. Interesting. Yeah, I was

2:55

just looking back at some

2:58

of the works. I actually

3:00

knew Cat in the Hot Tin, if I knew some of his

3:02

other work, but I hadn't read Streetcar. And

3:06

I don't know, it's funny. I had different ideas of what it would

3:08

be. And when I read it,

3:10

it felt so current to me. Tell me what

3:12

you thought it was and tell me what you

3:14

ended up reading. Oh, well, I

3:17

had seen images of Blanche DuBois. I

3:19

kind of, she

3:21

was coming from a sort of

3:24

a decaying plantation life and her

3:26

problems just felt really far from

3:28

mine. And I didn't know how it would have

3:30

an in. And

3:32

then I read the piece and really understood

3:34

what she had actually endured and that

3:37

a lot of it was a

3:39

cover and the performance that

3:41

we, human life as a performance

3:43

and how she kind of learned to cope. And

3:46

I found it really moving. And

3:49

you said you sort of found your way in that way. I

3:52

did. You know, I

3:55

also read it at sort of

3:57

the height or closer to the,

3:59

just. just outside of the

4:01

height of Me Too. And of

4:03

course there is sexual assault in this piece

4:06

and there's a big decision that the sister

4:08

has to make whether or not she believes

4:10

her. So that also resonated

4:12

in a really strong way. The issues

4:16

around mental health, like I just couldn't believe what

4:18

he was talking about in 1947 and

4:22

just how raw and layered

4:24

it all was. Isn't that

4:26

interesting? I mean that was something I was one

4:28

of the sort of questions I

4:31

wanted to ask you, which Beers asking is

4:33

what is the relevance of a piece from

4:35

1947 for now? But it sounds sounds like

4:37

quite a lot. Yeah

4:39

you know I guess there's some things that just don't

4:41

change you know. He talks about writing

4:44

it because he says you know most of

4:46

us only see each other through our own

4:48

egos and you know when

4:50

our egos clash with other egos you can see how

4:53

blurred the glass and the lens that we see each other

4:55

could be and so everybody's

4:57

flawed. He's dealing with

4:59

post-World War II, people are all

5:03

trying to survive, women are trying to find their

5:05

place as men are coming back into society, societies

5:10

who have lived without sort

5:12

of the influx of immigrants are dealing with that.

5:14

Like there's so much pressure

5:19

and cultural divide and everything else that

5:22

you sort of see everybody well

5:25

at their worst and at their best because they're pushed to

5:27

the edges. So

5:29

yeah it's just the stakes of it it

5:32

just felt it

5:35

wasn't really about the victims and heroes it

5:37

was just really about our flawed characters and

5:39

the choices that we make. So interesting

5:41

yeah. How about Blanche? How do you see

5:43

Blanche now? You

5:45

know I have

5:49

a deep love for her you

5:52

know she she

5:56

mental health again you know and

5:58

and definitely One

8:01

of the things that changes you made in the

8:03

work is something we've been talking a lot

8:05

about in our office. So, Tennessee Williams, incredible,

8:09

one of the great American playwrights, like with any work

8:11

from the 1940s to the 1930s, 1940s, 50s, generally there's

8:13

conversations that happen,

8:18

complicated conversations around representation, around

8:21

what was in that work, what needed a change in that work. And

8:23

one of the things we were talking about in the office is that

8:25

a lot of his works don't feature black characters and when they do,

8:27

they're at the margins of the story. They're

8:29

not given names, they're not really given stories.

8:32

And this is something you changed in your

8:34

adaptation of Streetcar. Can you tell me a

8:36

little bit about that? Yeah.

8:39

You know, we all read it with our own lens, right?

8:42

Every play. And when I

8:44

read that play, it never was explained

8:46

why her sister ran away from Mississippi

8:48

and the plantation to New Orleans, which

8:51

at the time would have been much more diverse

8:53

and a place where a

8:55

lot of black folks were moving from

8:57

Mississippi to go towards. And

9:00

it doesn't explain why. And then

9:02

she lives in this community that's

9:05

described as really multicultural. And

9:07

I was like, oh, Stella's black. Just

9:10

from my own reading, we all have finer

9:12

entry points. And I started to think there's

9:14

something about the way that they talk to

9:17

each other and that they had a different life or

9:19

a different way of coping with that world. And

9:22

I just imagined what if they had different mothers.

9:26

So she's played by an extraced woman. And

9:30

there are some things, like Blanche

9:32

has a really hard time understanding how to

9:34

fit in that society and Stella just

9:37

jumps right in. That just occurred to you, hey, when you read

9:39

it, it jumped out to you when you were reading

9:41

the work. It did. Because

9:43

I wondered, I was like, where is she going? And how

9:45

does she think she can survive? And how does she survive

9:47

so quickly? And Blanche

9:50

just does not have the same

9:52

capability just in the way that they

9:54

were raised. And also I was

9:56

like, oh, the community is all diverse. And

12:00

our lead singer is none other than Divine

12:02

Brown. So the house comes down. I

12:06

bet you got a good band too. Yeah, we do. We

12:09

got really lucky with some incredible actors

12:11

who also can play trombone and divines

12:13

on the tuba. It's quite wonderful. Did

12:16

I play tuba? She does now. I've

12:21

met Divine before, and if she's been hiding a secret

12:23

tuba. She played it in high school.

12:25

She pulled it out. Five

12:27

years since she played it in high school. I

12:30

played euphonium. Well, you should pick it up. I will

12:32

not. Did you play anything in high school? I did

12:35

not. No music? No, no, I didn't. But

12:37

now I'm learning. What are you

12:40

learning? Piano, guitar. Aria,

12:42

how are you doing? Well, I

12:44

wrote the music for The Kink of My Hair. And

12:47

that was on a guitar. So I was just picking. So

12:50

yeah, now I'm actually learning what the chords are called

12:52

in the long term, learning

12:55

a bit of theory. I

12:57

can't wait for your record. I can't wait. I

13:00

can't wait for your performance over there. Five

13:02

years since A Streetcar Named Desire, the first time you

13:04

mounted it, it was a big, big hit. As

13:07

a director, what has this time given you? Are you

13:09

looking at it differently? Definitely. I mean, the first time

13:11

you do A Streetcar Named Desire, you're dealing with

13:14

the fear of just actually entering an iconic piece.

13:17

And what are you going to do with it?

13:20

And all your actors are too. So

13:24

we're able to come to it with

13:26

a different kind of, more

13:29

relaxed. We did it. We

13:31

did it. And we didn't, you know, we didn't screw

13:33

it up too badly. Didn't screw it up as Colb.

13:35

What did I say? One of the best productions of

13:37

the decade or something like that? Yeah. And we were,

13:39

you know, it sold out in the end. And we

13:41

were just about to go on a Canadian tour. And

13:43

so the pandemic kind of cut that short. So we

13:45

thought it would be wonderful to come back and really

13:48

be able to spend the time not building

13:50

the world, but actually delving deeper into

13:52

the characters. I want to ask you at

13:54

The Inc. because I want people to go to see this thing. What

13:57

you want audiences to come away with.