Tennessee Williams is considered by some to be the greatest American playwright of the 20th Century, and one of his most acclaimed works is coming to the Orlando stage, but not in the form you might be accustomed to.
Orlando Ballet presents “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Dr. Phillips Center’s Steinmetz Hall in Orlando April 27-30.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” follows Blanche DuBois, a former Southern socialite who is left with no choice but to move in with her estranged sister Stella and brutal brother-in-law Stanley, who are living in a small, gritty apartment in the French Quarter of New Orleans.
Over the course of its more than 75-year history, Williams’ play has been revived and reinvented time and time again. It has been performed on stages and screens — both big and small. It has been parodied on “The Simpsons,” it has been an opera and, yes, it has even been a ballet.
“Sometimes you can’t say things with words but you can say things with movement,” says Jorden Morris, Orlando Ballet’s artistic director. “We can tell so many things with dance and sometimes we get stuck telling more of the lighter tales or the mythical tales or the fantasy tales and I want to open the doors for people to realize that it’s also an art form that can tell very, very touching and gritty and complex stories as well.”
“A Streetcar Named Desire” definitely fits the description of “gritty and complex.” The play, a classic of American literature, features mature themes including depictions of sexual violence as well as physical and emotional abuse.
The first time “A Streetcar Named Desire” was staged as a ballet was in 1952, five years after the play premiered on Broadway. The version being performed by the Orlando Ballet was created and choreographed in 2012 by international choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa.
“I’ve always been a big fan of Tennessee Williams, as well as a big fan of Annabelle’s work,” Morris says. “When the opportunity came up and I was curating the season, I wanted to put something in the season that was a little bit deeper, a little bit more intense, for the artist and for the audience, and what Annabelle has done with the choreography is exactly that: just brilliant storytelling through movement.”
Watermark spoke with Ochoa about the show during her time in Orlando.
WATERMARK: For those who are more familiar with the play and/or movie, how does the ballet differ from those versions?
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa: When I read the book, it starts when she arrives in New Orleans and her past is revealed as we move through the story. At first when I shut the book, I thought, “Oh, well, she’s a liar. She deserves everything.” It’s not true. So to avoid that, we decided to first give the backstory of how Blanche DuBois became that liar, nymphomaniac, drinker and all of that, because she had to survive something in her past, she feels guilty about her past actions and that’s why she became that character. So that’s how we laid it out, very chronologically. So hopefully when the audience sees that, they will understand her more and not be as judgmental as I was.
This story deals with some heavy subjects. How are you approaching the choreography to portray these subjects in dance without coming across as gratuitous?
I think that, in a good play, the tension is built on the subtext, on what is not revealed, not said but that you carry with you. I try to do that with movements and with situations. One of the characters happens to be a closeted gay man, but in the ‘50s people weren’t allowed to show that. I have a gay dancer who’s so happy to finally have a gay character. I’m like, “No, no, no, no. Actually, you’re not allowed to show it.” It’s just that subtlety between the characters and in the movements that’s going to make us feel the tension that there was. For all the situations, we’re trying to show the tension more than the actual act of everything. I’m hoping to convey that tension with the audience and with the dancers that there’s more pain in the characters and in the things that are not said, or things that are said behind closed doors or behind somebody’s back, so that’s how we approach those difficult situations.
We have an intimacy coach that’s going to come and guide us on how we go about violent scenes and erotic scenes so that everybody feels at ease with those moments, and everybody can actually stop and we can discuss it and say, “Well, how far are you going?”
But I always say ballet is not a documentary that we’re doing, it’s not a movie. We don’t go completely naked; we don’t do the actual act. It remains poetry, the poetry of the body and the poetry of movement and how much movement can express without doing the actual motions.
Much of the movie and play take place in small, confined spaces. How do you convey that feeling of claustrophobia with dancers performing across a full stage?
With lighting. Every time they go into the apartment, the light creates a definite space they’re stuck in. But with ballet, we depend a lot on the imagination of the audience. There are no actual walls, you have to imagine it. But because of lighting, we’re confining the space.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” is one of the most acclaimed plays of the 21st Century. Were you intimidated at all taking on this story, which is lauded for its dialogue, and telling it to an audience just through dance?
Yes. When we had the U.S. premiere in New Orleans with the Scottish Ballet [in 2012], we were, of course, very curious how the American audience was going to react to something they all knew and read in school, and we got applause after each scene because they recognized the scene and were amazed how, as a silent movie, the scenes were recreated and they understood all the tension that were in the scenes. We did not have that applause when they were performing it in Scotland, but the applause came from them recognizing the scene and understanding the scenes. That was pretty funny. I think we did a good job with [director] Nancy Meckler, who knew the movie, knew the book and had done the show, I would say 25 years ago. She knew it inside out and she knew all the elements that were needed for us to understand each scene and each character. A lot of people say it feels like watching a silent movie.
“A Streetcar Named Desire,” presented by the Orlando Ballet, runs April 27-30 at the Dr. Phillips Center’s Steinmetz Hall in Orlando. Tickets start at $29 and are available to purchase at OrlandoBallet.org.
