Alissa Capra as Trixie	Jack Dacey as Big Daddy	Kevin Dumont as Gooper	Jennifer Ehlert as Maggie
Ron Freitas as Dr. Baugh	Rose Lahue as Dixie	Ruth Lebrun as Mae	Cote McCullock as Sonny
Ruthe Monahan as Big Mama	Ed Phaneuf as Brick	David Robson as Buster	Phillis Rock as Sookey
Tom Shanahan as Reverend

The Production Staff:

Irene Meaney Director	Carol Lyman Assistant to the Director	Richard L. Meaney Producer, Set Design & Sound	Richard L. Meaney Set Design
Curtis Smith Lights	Joanne Soulard Make-Up	Gloria Callahan Costumes	JulieAnn Govang Program & Publicity
Kevin Dumont Box Office

In Rehearsal

Jack Dacey as "Big Daddy"	Ed Phaneuf as "Brick"	Ed with Jennifer Ehlert as "Maggie"
	Ed	Jack Dacey, Ron Freitas (as Dr.Baugh), Ruthe (sitting) Tom Shanahan (as Reverand) & Ruth Lebrun (as Mae)
Jack & Tom	Double checking lines...who's supposed to be where?  And when?	Kevin, Tom & Jack
	Jack & Ruthe	Jack, Ruth & Kevin Dumont (as Gooper)
Irene, Jack, Ruth & Kevin	Jennifer & Ruthe taking a break.	Kevin, Tom & Ruth
Ruthe & Jack	Jennifer & Ed	Ruthe & Jennifer
Ron & Tom		Ron, Ruth & Ruthe
	Ruthe, Ed & Jack

The  Play
“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is a play about the human experience in a society, which tries to dictate to people how they should live, and at a time where lack of human communication leads to the unavoidable loneliness of man. In the overcharged circumstances of a family crisis many truths are revealed about human feeling: our desperate fear of death, our love of life, our hidden guilt, our insecurities, our inability to face the truth, our materialism, our greatness, our pettiness…The impression given of man is of a dramatic helplessness, an inability to do anything else but be human…

The play begins with the presentation of the historical family background and sets the scene for the development and climax of the crisis. All the characters seem to be suffering from loneliness and lack of communication. Williams is wary of a change in social values and the disintegration of the family unit as a result of a general social and global change. Big daddy’s words echo this concern: “sometimes I think that a vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff nature replaces it with” i.e.. It is natural to grow and evolve but the product of this change is unpredictable and often negative.

Big Daddy is, in fact, the embodiment of the American Dream, and through his character Williams shows how the American society has sacrificed all values in the temple of the most popular value in the world: money. The American Dream has an ugly face, and Big Daddy is a commercial success, but a failure in every other aspect. He has failed as a human being in that he centered his little empire around himself and became blind to the needs and feelings of those around him. Big Daddy himself acts as if money is his only value as a human being, or perhaps he’s afraid of this: “Y’know how much I’m worth? Guess Brick! Guess how much I’m worth!”

An invisible struggle takes place within Big Daddy as he tries to approach Brick as a loving father approaches his needy child, exposing his innermost tenderness and insecurity. The conflict is between his love for his child and his determination to get to the truth, and the mentality of his upbringing in a poor family where the father was usually an unapproachable, distant figure. This is hinted in Williams’ stage directions: “glancing quickly, shyly, from time to time, at his son”, “pressing his head quickly, shyly against his son’s head, then coughing with embarrassment…”(displays of affection are “embarassing to him”).

Through the difficulty of Big Daddy and Brick to talk openly and not around the subject, Williams displays the lack of communication between people, which leads to loneliness and isolation. The timeless, dramatic question is raised: “Why is it so damn hard for people to talk?” No human being can answer this question or any question concerning the infinite mystery of the human soul. The two men prove this as they talk and talk while saying nothing of essence and not listening to each other most of the time: “Communication is awful hard between people”. As Brick says: “We talk, you talk in circles! We get nowhere, nowhere!” However, Big Daddy’s care and willingness to understand is fierce and so is his determination to communicate with his son: “Don’t let’s- leave it like this, like them other talks we’ve had…it’s always like something was left not spoken”. Both men are about to find out that when they don’t avoid talking of the truth it’s “painful”, and as Big Daddy says, “Yeah, it’s hard t-talk”.

Big Daddy and Brick are to some extent tragic characters, but if the play were a typical tragedy, they wouldn’t be the leading figures; the world as a whole would have the leading part. Williams skillfully incorporates the tragedy of the world into Big Daddy’s “Tallinn jag”. The tragedy of the world makes Brick’s problems seem petty. However, Brick’s problems are directly related to the world. A world that glorified him, a world he loved so much that he adopted all its prejudice. When he was no longer young and perfect, this same world dropped him like a hot brick. Now he’s disgusted with the world, disgusted with himself for being part of it, and so he isolates himself from it. Big Daddy accepted the ugliness and mendacity in the world, which made him hardened and cynical.

Through Big Daddy’s explosive outburst of truthfulness, Williams explores the depth of human feeling and the melancholy and drama of a man who has to live a life as the world dictates it. Williams explores the mendacity in human behavior and questions institutions that are taken for granted. For example, we are brought up with the firm belief that our family must love us, and we must love our family. Through Big Daddy, Williams shows that love sometimes doesn’t come between family members. He wants to explore if it’s not so unnatural to feel this way.

Williams is a master in presenting the dramatic “thwarted effort to break through walls to each other”. This is illustrated in Act II’s dialogue between Brick and Big Daddy, which slowly builds up the dramatic tension as Big Daddy comes closer and closer to the truth. Williams skillfully builds up the dramatic tension and supplements his writing with “visual” effects to reflect in the atmosphere the feelings within the characters e.g. as the tension comes to a climax, the fireworks appear.

Through their marathon dialogue Big Daddy does manage to penetrate to the truth. The violent confrontation with the truth results in both father and son losing their “crutches”, the safety device, which helped them avoid the truth. Brick feels guilty for killing the false hope of life within his father, and tries to excuse his truthfulness by saying: “being almost not alive makes me sort of accidentally truthful”. A moral question is raised here: should a man be told he’s dying? (given that it is implied in the play that an “alive” man cannot be a “truthful” man). Is the truth a helpful force in such cases? If the truth kills all hope, should we accept it?

Tennessee Williams makes it clear that the main concern and aim of the play is not to find clear answers for the characters. It is irrelevant if Brick is gay or not and what becomes of him and Maggie, and so a definite answer is not given. Williams is a playwright to be respected for accepting that he too is human. He doesn’t pretend to know all the answers to the infinite questions of life and character, as no human being can find definite answers. He clearly says: “The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this play is not the solution of one man’s psychological problem”.

So Brick’s problems aren’t the most important thing in the play, even though they are presented and analyzed fully. Williams knows that we never really know who we are or who other people are as the human soul has the depth of an abyss: “a great deal of mystery is left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself”. In not attempting to give answers, Williams succeeds in being truthful and believable in his representation of human feeling and experience.

The story of the characters in the play is just the means through which Williams gives his messages and captures the explosive depth of feeling experienced by a group of people at a time of crisis. He clearly defines his purpose in writing: “I’m trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering, evanescent- fiercely charged! - interplay of live human beings in the thundercloud of a common crisis”.