How Screens affect Perception in The Glass Menagerie

When looking back in our memory, it's often difficult to tell others about our experiences so they understand what happened in the same way that we do.  This disconnect could have been a problem in what Tom refers to as a “memory play,” but Williams has a way to try and counteract this.  Instead of ignoring this, Williams' implements an unorthodox tool in the theater. The screen used on the set of The Glass Menagerie gives the audience a better sense of the characters' background and also emphasizes points that Williams wants to get across.

Multiple times throughout the play, Williams says to project a phrase or a picture on the screen in the stage directions.  These pictures often foreshadow a coming event to show its significance.  For example, after Jim dances the waltz with Laura he offers to kiss her at line 485, and the next stage direction says to show “A souvenir” on the screen then Laura offers the broken unicorn figure to Jim as a souvenir at line 525.  The same also happens when Jim talks to Tom and a picture of the pirate ship appears, then a little later in the play we hear that Jim was in his prime in high school he performed the lead in his opera called The Pirates of Penzance.

The use of these figures does help to give some events deeper meaning.  Using the pirate ship example again, we can see through the memory of a great event in Jim’s high school career that he is trying to get out of his rut by taking the night classes he was discussing.  Without this image we wouldn’t have known about that in the audience, but we would also be a lot less confused.

The use of this screen is an interesting attempt to use different techniques to give the audience a deeper understanding of the play, however it doesn’t help more than it distracts us.  Many times the images shown, like in the case of the pirate ship, don’t quite relate to what’s going on in the play and the audience starts trying to figure out how the picture and the plot relate instead of paying attention to the dialogue.  Without hearing the dialogue, the audience won’t understand what’s going on in the plot and it’s much harder to understand the bigger point Williams is trying to portray.  It would have been better if Williams figured out a different way to get this point across or just incorporated the slides a bit better.