Like all MFA directing students, Winters has directed several productions during his time at USC and his final directing presentation must be on the main stage.

But Menagerie has become more than a degree requirement for Winters.

“I wasn’t aware of how intricate the play is, how beautiful the language is,” said Winters, who has a B.A. in theatre from the University of Louisville. “For the audience, the play is an easy experience—funny and moving.

“There are actually two versions of The Glass Menagerie: a reader’s version and an actor’s version. I liked the actor’s version better. I wanted to use Williams’ exact words, so I took a few beautiful lines from the first version and incorporated them into the actors’ version.

“Then I began by asking, ‘Why has the play’s main character, Tom Wingfield, called everyone here as witness for him to re-experience his past?’ There was a reason Tom wished to relive these memories. He wanted to seek a kind of redemption, or come to terms with leaving his mother and sister behind. In Tom’s current world, he is trapped by feelings of guilt. The image we began to work with was one of escape and of conjuring the past to escape the present.

“When Menagerie is produced, there’s usually a space on stage where Tom delivers his monologues, and often it’s a lighted alleyway. We went further and created a fire escape. The suggestion is that this fire escape—which is essentially a metaphor for Tom’s present life—also contains the past. So we’ve been able to create two worlds, not just an area where Tom speaks in the present but also a world that looms over his past.”

But The Glass Menagerie is more than just a story of a family.

“There’s a larger story there,” Winters said. “In fact, Tom carries his present knowledge and concerns into the past with him, so it’s not simply a story about reflection. There is a moment or two where we get a sense that he would like to move back in and change the past, but he isn’t able to.”

One of the biggest challenges to directing the play, Winters said, is guiding the character of Laura.

“Williams drew her as fearful, and the text doesn’t allow a lot of room to go beyond that,” he explained. “We were interested in a character that is more understandable, more approachable from a modern audience’s standpoint. We talked in terms of social disorders, extreme anxiety perhaps. Kay Allman, the MFA acting student who plays Laura, has made some great discoveries to go beyond the character Williams’ presented on paper.”

Another challenge of the play is making smooth, unobtrusive transitions from scene to scene.

“We’ve used artistic elements of light and sound, but no blackouts, which is what is typically done,” Winters said. “The tricky part is to in some way suggest a conclusion from the end of one scene and before the next one begins. In our production of Menagerie, there is a shift of sound and music, but at the end of the sequence the actors stay on stage and there is a suggestion that time has passed. We’re asking the audience to use their imagination, enjoy it, and come along with us.”

10/03