Stephen Hamilton Is Back at Bay Street, This Time To Direct 'A Streetcar Named Desire' for 'Literature Live!'

On a recent visit to Bay Street Theater, director Stephen Hamilton was revved up and raring to go. It was the first official day of rehearsals for the upcoming Literature Live! production of Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and the cast was due to arrive within the hour.

But instead of spending the early days blocking scenes on an empty stage with tape marks on the floor standing in for walls and furnishings, as is typical for a rehearsal process, Hamilton would be working with his actors on a set that was already built and fully functional.

It’s a rare luxury for a director.

“It’s nice to have it done,” confirmed Hamilton, adding that fortuitous scheduling at summer’s end gave set designer Mike Billings the ability to get a jump on things. “Mike had the building crew here in August after ‘Young Frankenstein’ closed, and they had three weeks to work on it. Mike designed this in June or July, built it by the end of summer and just moved it in on Monday. It was practical on his part.”

It also saved Hamilton at least one day and possibly more during rehearsals.

“One of the trickiest parts about a rehearsal period is when actors hit the stage for the first time, usually a day before techs if you’re lucky,” he explained. “In this case, the actors get to work on the set. That sense of place becomes specific early on.

“We have a really short rehearsal period, only two weeks, but I feel having this set gives us virtually two extra days — possibly three — because of the actors’ ability to feel it and be at home with it,” he said. “It’s also a chance to make adjustments.”

“A Streetcar Named Desire” will be the 16th anniversary production of Literature Live!, Bay Street’s educational outreach initiative where, each fall, classic literature is presented on the stage for high school students across the region. The first student performance began November 12. Performances for the general public begin Thursday, November 14, with a red carpet opening this Saturday, November 16, at 7 p.m. and the show runs through December 1.

First performed on Broadway in 1947, “A Streetcar Named Desire” deals with difficult issues including alcoholism, domestic abuse, sexual assault, homosexuality and suicide. It follows fading Southern belle Blanche DuBois who is forced to leave Belle Reve, the family’s former plantation in Laurel, Mississippi, and move into a shabby apartment in New Orleans belonging to her sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. As more of Blanche’s troubled life is revealed in the play, including her hazy financial and marital situation, Stella and Stanley’s own domestic strife becomes apparent as well.

Directed by Elia Kazan, the initial Broadway run of “A Streetcar Named Desire” starred Jessica Tandy as Blanche and a then-unknown actor named Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley. The play won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was subsequently made into a film — also directed by Kazan with Brando as Stanley — in 1951 and has since become a classic for both stage and screen.

For Hamilton, bringing this particular play — which he has never seen performed live, incidentally — to life has its difficulties, not least of which is the fact that it contains very mature material that will be presented to very young audiences.

“The challenges are considerable. From the get-go, I said I know this is Literature Live!, but there’s domestic abuse, toxic masculinity, rape,” he said. “It’s always the question. Is it more prevalent now or are we just more aware of it? Blanche recognizes it and says to Stella, ‘You have to leave this man.’ But they’re crazy about each other.”

When asked if the issues addressed by Williams that were based on societal norms of the 1940s, including the shame of a supposedly straight man living a secretly gay life, will connect with students in 2024, Hamilton said he thinks they will.

“Being gay and being found out and shamed — that’s transferrable to this young kid who recently killed himself over an AI thing,” he said. “Coming from the shame and feeling alone, this guy saw no way out. There’s slut shaming and creating avatars, and the isolation it’s caused. How many kids see no way out because of the world, social media and an algorithm that’s feeding them the most isolating material?

“The second thing that occurred to me, and I think it’s really important, is the legacy and the karma that Blanche brings from Belle Reve in Laurel, Mississippi, which Stella and Blanche grew up on,” Hamilton continued. “Tennessee Williams doesn’t reference it directly, but the property has been in the family for generations, so you know there were enslaved people.

“We know about the brutality, violence and everything attendant to slavery in the American South. That stuff was there and that’s karma she brings to the stage, though it’s never mentioned outwardly,” he added. “It’s generational trauma — not just on the African American side — but the souls of the people enslaving other people. It’s almost Greek in that she’s bringing it in and you know it will end badly for her. It’s inevitable because of Jim Crow, unresolved issues from the Civil War and the ramming through of the electoral college system as a compromise to get things going.”

Directing this version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” — which runs a tight 90 minutes to conform with the students’ schedules — represents something of a full-circle moment for Hamilton who, in 1991, co-founded Bay Street Theater with his wife, Emma Walton Hamilton, and the late Sybil Christopher. Not only is this the first time Hamilton is directing a Literature Live! production, it’s also the first time he has been back to direct anything at Bay Street since before he and Walton Hamilton left the organization in 2006 after a management shake-up.

“I haven’t directed here since 2001 and it feels fantastic,” Hamilton said. “Working back at Bay Street again is great. I love the challenge of directing and this is a very challenging play. I also like the fact that it’s for Literature Live!, so I’ve been thinking pedagogically from the get-go in terms of how this can be incorporated into academic study.”

One element that Hamilton is excited to incorporate into the production is a soundtrack that evokes the themes and history of New Orleans, reflecting the significance of both the play’s setting and its plot.

“The music of New Orleans is vital and important,” he said. “I asked David Brandenburg, the sound designer, to create a pre- and post-show play list. A lot of people won’t have the awareness, so I want to do a spiral study of music starting with work songs from the field, then moving into early blues with all New Orleans artists right up through the post-show, ending with Wynton Marsalis.”

Though “A Streetcar Named Desire” represents totally brand-new material for Hamilton, in working with the actors he will approach the script as he has approached most others he has directed in the past.

“The way I work is to discover the piece with the actors at the same time,” he said. “I have a lot of ideas, but that’s all they are. I allow the actors to lead the revelation because it’s their story.”

As a result, he finds that the actors themselves are able to bring so much more to the play.

“I feel free to surround them with the production values and I cast the best people I can and let them go,” he said.

And that’s exactly how you catch a “Streetcar.”

The cast of Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” includes Daniela Mastropietro as Blanche DuBois, Shea Buckner as Stanley Kowalski, Katie Rodgers as Stella Kowalski, Sawyer A. Spielberg as Harold “Mitch” Mitchell, Nicole Marie Hunt as Eunice Hubbell, Joe Pallister as Steve Hubbell, Carlos Garcia as Pablo Gonzalez, Adelaide Mestre as Nurse/Mexican Woman and Matthew Conlon as Doctor.

The first public performance is Thursday, November 14, at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $39.99 at baystreet.org or 631-725-9500 and continue through December 1 with some matinees. Free performances are available to school groups by contacting Allen O’Reilly, Bay Street’s director of education, at allen@baystreet.org or by calling 631-725-0818. Bay Street Theater is on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.