The Glass Menagerie And Winnie Holzman And Stephen...

Theater has been a platform that has been used to deepen our communication and understanding of the complexities of the world around us. It teaches us through language, movement, and the establishment of intimate relationships that play to the contagious nature of emotions. The majority of the 20th century saw a utilization of plays as a tool to stimulate social change, provoke viewers to assess the foundation of what they believe, and an attempt to depict humanity as it truly was. In comparison, though not totally in abandonment, the later 20th century and early 21th century brought to life a more flashy, commercialized interpretation of this tool, and played to the societal theme of entertainment, as seen in the increase of musical theater (Janaro). A true example of this stark contrast is Tennessee Williams’ tragedy The Glass Menagerie and Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz’s mega-musical Wicked. Although from fundamentally different eras and using the employment of distinctive structures that correlate with the different branches of theater, at the core, these stories speak to the same idea of freedom as discussed in the Janaro text. Through assessing the actual elements of these theatrical pieces, there are a lot of similar motifs advanced by both works. In both cases, there is an overarching theme of the characters being divergent from cultural expectations, the ideal of fatherhood is outlined as symbol of contempt and abandonment, there is prevalence of both