They've dropped the "Kowalski" from Stanley's name in new Streetcar revival

They've also removed references to the term 'polack'

Unblacbelievable?

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These were the changes Williams himself approved for that 1956 all black off Broadway production that never happened, so nothing we should see as blasphemous.

Is there a way to get a copy of that script? I'm doing scholarly research on Streetcar right now and would love to read it.

Thanks for the info, MB. That just made this revival much more interesting. : ) I wonder why the powers behind this production haven't explained this fully, rather than Emily Mann recalling Diane Paulus with half-assed statements like this:

"I've made tiny little shifts and changes to make it accurate and authentic, to New Orleans and to black New Orleans — but I've made fewer than you would think, almost none," director Mann said to Playbill. "And, if we are doing it right, you won't, after a while, notice that at all. What happens is, it's so true to itself that you think Tennessee wrote it for this cast... The landscape of any Tennessee Williams play is the human heart, and I have a cast of people with heart."

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Updated On: 4/3/12 at 01:19 PM

Michael Bennett, can you please remove the information you've added to this thread that's useful for contextualizing the choices of the revival's creative team? I was more comfortable being outraged. Thanks in advance.

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I believe there is a line when Blanche starts going off on Stella about the loss of Belle Reve that goes "And where were you? In bed with your Pollack!"

So what will it be changed to?

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Goth knows that word very well. He shouts it out to little kids he passes by on the street.

So, then it's not color-blind casting. It's just casting. Which makes it seem almost as if one must APOLOGIZE for having an all-black cast. I don't see the point, Polish or not.

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Thanks, MB! Fascinating stuff. And it makes perfect sense that Williams would have been happy about the productions.

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Hearing Blair Underwood called Stanley Kowalski, a Pole and a Pollack might - rightly or wrongly - seem absurd to many people under any circumstances. All the more so if, in this production, perceived ethnic differences between the characters play no less a role than in any other production of Streetcar.

From what I understand this is not a color-blind Streetcar. For one thing, Stanley, Blanche and Stella are all played by people of color. Rather it is a Streetcar in which the sisters and brother-in-law are African American, and in which Blanche's old Southern family pride-informed disparagement of Stanley's immigrant Polish identity is transposed to a light skinned Blanche's equally prideful disparagement of a dark skinned Stanley.

Whether or not the parallel is evident in any reworked lines, or is something to be read between them, time will tell. But there would not seem to be any reason not to hope that such a transposition might prove very authentic and effective. Color tone as an index of social status has a part in African American life and history, and has not been an insignificant factor in New Orleans society.

I think a color-blind, or all-African-American version of STREETCAR could be wonderful. What I frankly question is a 48 year-old version of Stanley, the hot-headed young upstart and most likely to succeed among his peers. Stella touts her husband loudly and often, he's the new breed. That very component is one of the things that throws and challenges Blanche, the old school, old world-embracing true believer in a kinder, gentler culture. Even if Underwood looks 40, Stanley just isn't. Stella isn't 42, and her pregnancy is written as the sort of natural occurence in a young woman's life. So this production is far more about older actors wearing these roles than the racial make-up, and I believe that will be part of the discussion about its success or failure.

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