A Streetcar Named Desire: A Senior Directing Thesis by Amanda Klute

Senior double English and Theatre major Amanda Klute knew what she was taking on when she proposed A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams for her senior directing thesis. There is no doubt that she faced unrelenting pressure from her professors, her peers, and most of all, herself while directing arguably the most famous American play of all time. Choosing a play fraught with deceit, alcohol, and sex, Mary Martin Prize winner Amanda Klute knew just what she was taking on. 

Equipped with a design team consisting of Reilly Cox ’16 as set designer, Lily Starr ’17 and Lilly King ’18 as costume designers, Anna Zastrow ’17 as lighting designer, Grace O’Connor ’16 as dramaturg, Cat Righter ’17 as props designer, and Lindsey Nyman ’17 as sound designer, Klute begin her extensive process. The design team set to work on creating the modern environment Klute envisioned. Klute says of her team “All my designers worked together with such cohesion and proactiveness, it was like they were one hive mind working towards an end product, and I couldn’t be happier and prouder with the art they created.” Converting a play originally set in the 1940s to 2015 was no small feat, but Klute felt it was necessary and stuck with her instinct throughout the process. “Williams’s heavily nuanced layers, themes, and the controversial topics he wrote of are universal, and we should view them as such. In stripping Streetcar’s iconography, constricting it to a period play didn’t serve the story, but rather hurt it. This play takes place now, and in promoting the universality of Streetcar, I knew I had to set it in a contemporary environment,” says Klute. As a director, she chose to focus on the timelessness of A Streetcar Named Desire rather than fleshing out the confine of time period; by setting it in 2015 we as an audience more easily focus on the content of the show rather than the aesthetics of period garb and setting.  

As far as her greatest challenge goes, Klute says “My greatest challenge was stripping the weight of the expectations that has held this play down for so many years, and letting these raw, honest emotions be accessed by a modern college audience.” Her production was no doubt stripped, using costumes and props to anchor the abstract set and lighting. The play itself carries with it the weight of previous productions; being the most famous American play of all time, Klute grappled her way through the expectation of Marlon Brandos and Vivien Leighs to actualize her vision. In the end, we find that Klute’s vision entailed a lot of natural imagery; vines crept their way onto the set from behind the curtain, blending the barrier between public and private. Klute’s set, designed by senior Reilly Cox, whose playwriting thesis will also debut this fall, and was made of primarily wood and black metal lighting towers. The set was mostly used for exits and entrances, blocking the bulk of the content  inside the framework of the set. 

Klute’s greatest strength was her vision, and by sticking with that vision in spite of the expectations put upon her she created a truly unique production of A Streetcar Named Desire.