![\"Jessica](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/sut-l-stage-streetcar.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWho is Blanche DuBois and why, since she was introduced to audiences nearly 80 years ago, does the fragile spirit of Tennessee Williams\u2019 most famous character seem ephemeral and immortal at the same time?<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s funny and awkward and terrible and beautiful and tragic,\u201d said Jessica John, who\u2019s playing Blanche in Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company\u2019s production of \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire,\u201d now in previews at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center downtown. \u201cTennessee Williams writes a really great character. Any actor who takes it on has his writing, and you\u2019re going to find those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStreetcar\u201d premiered on Broadway in 1947, directed by Elia Kazan and featuring Jessica Tandy as Blanche, Kim Hunter as Stella, the younger married sister she moves in with in New Orleans, and in a star-making turn, a young Marlon Brando as her earthy but brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Four years later, the play was adapted into a film, also directed by Kazan, with Brando and Hunter reprising their roles and Vivien Leigh as Blanche in a performance that would win her a second Oscar (after \u201cGone With The Wind\u201d).<\/p>\n
Over the years, an impressive roster of actors \u2014 including Jessica Lange, Glenn Close, Cate Blanchett, Ann-Margret and Gillian Anderson \u2014 would portray Blanche DuBois on stage or screen.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Backyard Renaissance Theatre<\/p>\n
Jessica John, left, and Megan Carmitchel play sisters Blanche and Stella, respectively, in Backyard Renaissance Theatre\u2019s \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire.\u201d (Daren Scott)<\/p>\n
Backyard Renaissance\u2019s production, which also stars Francis Gercke as Stanley, Megan Carmitchel as Stella and MJ Sieber as Stanley\u2019s poker buddy (and courtly wooer of Blanche) Mitch, is the first \u201cStreetcar\u201d staged in San Diego since 2008, when it was produced by the bygone Ion Theatre under the direction of Claudio Raygoza. (A planned North Coast Repertory Theatre production in 2020 was scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic.)<\/p>\n
Yet Rob Lutfy, who\u2019s directing the Backyard production, pointed out: \u201cThis play is performed every hour of the day somewhere in the world. Surprisingly, in Europe and Japan, it\u2019s performed a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among other things, he said, \u201cit has the second most popular balcony scene in all of theater history.\u201d (That would be the iconic \u201cStella! Stella!\u201d)<\/p>\n
For Jessica John, it\u2019s her second Tennessee Williams role after playing Maggie in \u201cCat on a Hot Tin Roof\u201d in 2005 at Cygnet Theatre.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt that time,\u201d she recalled, \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh my God, this was one of the most incredible writers and one of the most incredible writers for women. It made me think I wanted to play every woman he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m almost reticent to speak about how much I love this role (of Blanche) and how desperately I\u2019ve wanted to do this play because it puts too much on it. It\u2019s just a story, and we can\u2019t view it as this sacred thing. We have to do it like people.\u201d<\/p>\n
While acknowledging that \u201cStreetcar\u201d in its initial production was a case of push-and-pull between Williams, who advocated expressionism, and Kazan, pushing for realism, director Lutfy said that \u201con the page, it\u2019s a story about sisters that have come from a sexually repressed upbringing and are using very different ways of dealing with their past. There\u2019s also a triangle with Stella being in the center \u2014 Stanley and Blanche pulling at the allegiance of Stella.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never worked on a play with so much ambiguity. It\u2019s never just one thing. The language is muscular and lyrical. The characters are victims and perpetrators. The beauty of Williams for a director is it\u2019s an actor\u2019s feast. The givens are open enough for the actor to craft an arc that caters to them and where they are in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complexity of Blanche DuBois is feast for director and actor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to lean into Blanche\u2019s mental state and how we stage that,\u201d Lutfy said. \u201cWhat do we trust, what\u2019s a lie and what\u2019s truth? There are times when she speaks an incredible amount of truth, when she\u2019s no longer hiding from the light.\u201d<\/p>\n
For John, \u201cwhat Blanche is dealing with is very human, but then it goes beyond that to survival. Tennessee Williams deals with a tiny issue that is epic in nature, so it\u2019s a little thing like \u2018Don\u2019t open the door before I powder\u2019 to \u2018I\u2019m going to die on the streets if you don\u2019t give me a place to stay.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s also a real survivor. She\u2019s got these epic speeches where she is expressing herself so passionately. I find every time as I\u2019m doing that, she\u2019s right. She really has such a view of the world, an unmarried single woman left to struggle and deal with death in her family, with the plantation that the men in the family have basically given away, and she\u2019s had to do it on her own. As crazy and wild as she can be at various points, she also is very grounded and knows exactly what she\u2019s talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lutfy has directed John before at Backyard Renaissance with the dark comedy \u201cGod of Carnage\u201d in 2023; they were also fellow cast members that same year in a production of \u201cAugust: Osage County.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Actors](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/sut-l-stage-streetcar2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Daren Scott<\/p>\n
Actors Layth Haddad, left, Megan Carmitchel, Jessica John and Francis Gercke in Backyard Renaissance Theatre\u2019s \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire.\u201d (Daren Scott)<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a disciplined, hard-working actor,\u201d he said of John, \u201cand she brings a lot of comedy to her Blanche. Blanche is terrified of aging and of losing her ability to command a room of men and be looked at. She has to live in an illusion of reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
When women are growing up, John said, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot more posing and saying all the right things. As you get older, you say the honest things and people will view you as crazy for saying them. Blanche knows that things have gone off the rails. She even can see how Stella\u2019s life has gone off the rails.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like her. That is what happens. That\u2019s how we grow and age.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s generally believed that Williams based Blanche DuBois on his sister Rose, who was beset with mental health issues and was given a lobotomy against her will. The Stanley character, Lutfy said, finds Williams \u201cdelving into the animalistic nature, and ultimately the play\u2019s a tragedy. You can\u2019t get away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play\u2019s most famous line \u2014 Blanche\u2019s \u201cI have always depended on the kindness of strangers\u201d \u2014 punctuates the tragic climax of \u201cA Streetcar Named Desire.\u201d Lutfy suggests that, after all that has taken place in that steamy two-room flat in New Orleans, Williams might have posed something universal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end,\u201d Lutfy said, \u201cthere is a plea for kindness. It\u2019s a challenge for the audience. How do we rely on the kindness of strangers?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA Streetcar Named Desire\u201d<\/p>\n
When:<\/strong> Previews through Friday. Opens Saturday. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays. (Also 7:30 p.m. Wednesday July 2 and 7 p.m. Monday July 7; no performances July 4-5). Through July 12.<\/p>\n