I'm in another play.  This time it's a campus production at Williams.  The cast is all students, except for me, the lone older guy.  We are doing A Streetcar Named Desire and Omar Sangare is our estimable director. This is, of course, a classic.  But Sangare is creating a unique interpretation, focusing on Blanche's mental instability, a schizophrenia of sorts.  The student newspaper here provides a glimpse of Sangare's approach:

… Sangare looks to direct something entirely new and reflective of his philosophy that theater teaches us a great deal about ourselves as individuals and as a community. As we watch this play, according to Sangare, “we find how dark, dangerous, uncomfortable and scary human existence might become.”

“This is our major focus of theatrical exploration here,” Sangare said. “If someone wants a full view of a play, I would encourage that person to go to the library and read the entire play, to fully meet it one-on-one. In theater, we should rather present a version of it. I don’t want to compete with Sawyer [library].”

Many may wonder at Sangare’s desire to interpret the iconic A Streetcar Named Desire in a strange new way. It may seem like painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa, but Sangare answers, “Many people may come to the theater with very clear expectations … However, we cannot satisfy everyone’s vision. It’s simply impossible.” In this risky situation, Sangare sees a chance to raise challenging questions about ourselves. Where do we go when we have no place to go? How much do our imaginations help us, and when do they serve as a hindrance?

It makes for exhilarating rehearsals, watching as the actors, talented and hard-working and energetic, bring this vision to life.

My own role is very small: the doctor who comes in at the end to take Blanche away.  It provides me a perch from which to observe the creation of this fascinating production.  And it has also given me a glimpse of a Daoist moment in the text.

At the end, as the Doctor and the Matron are trying to get Blanche to leave, Blanche looks up at the Doctor, fear and bewilderment in her eyes, and asks him to tell the Matron to let go of her.  And the Doctor says, simply, "Let go." 

At first, I understood this as a rather straightforward physical command.  But as we have developed Sangare's interpretation, I have come to see it in a different light.  It is not simply a matter of releasing the Matron's hand from Blanche's arm.  It is an appeal to Blanche to let go of her fear.  To let go of what she thought she might be able to find by moving in with Stella and Stanley.  To let go of the failures of her past.  To let go of all that and just be here now.  And it works; or, at least, it serves as a moment when Blanche does turn away from her anxieties.  She gathers herself up, utters on of her most famous lines – "Whoever you are, I've always depended on the kindness of strangers" – and walks out calmly with the Doctor.

There's a Daoist resonance here.  Think of passage 22 of the Daodejing:

In yielding is completion.  In bent is straight.  In hollow is full. In exhaustion is renewal.  In little is contentment.  In much is confusion.

This is how a sage embraces primal unity as the measure of all beneath heaven.

Give up self-reflection and you're soon enlightened.

Give up self-definition and you're soon apparent.

Give up self-promotion and you're soon proverbial.

Give up self-esteem and you're soon perennial.

Simply give up contention and soon nothing in all beneath heaven contends with you.

It was hardly empty talk when the ancients declared "in yielding there is completion." Once you perfect completion you've returned home to it all.

In a sense, the doctor is telling Blanche to yield to the circumstances of the moment and she will find completion.  To give up struggling to define herself and she will find self-definition.  Just let go, and she will return home to it all….

The last scene from the 1951 movie is here (Youtube won't let me embed it…).