Al Hirschfeld's Tennessee Williams Caricatures

After doing the "Hello From Bertha" scene in class yesterday and talking about Tennessee Williams's great characters I was looking around online for what people have to say about the characters he writes. I found out that there is a collection of drawings by Al Hirschfeld depicting various Tennessee Williams characters. The thing that I found most interesting about these drawings was that there are many that depict different performances of the same plays. For example, there are several different drawings of Blanche Dubois but because there are different actresses playing her each time, different aspects of her character stand out in each picture. I thought it was so cool that Hirschfeld had this ability to look at a character that he personally had seen performed tons of times and pick out just what a certain actor brought to the character. I think this a great thing to think about whenever playing a really well known character, audience members, like Hirschfeld, see not just what they've always seen in the character but what you are bringing to it. I've attached a video that shows many of his drawings along with a commentary telling you which show and characters are depicted in each.

http://video-embed.nola.com/services/player/bcpid619329503001?bctid=774885075001