Die Glasmenagerie

In the organizer's words:

"I bring you truths in the friendly guise of illusions."

These are the words with which Tom Wingfield begins to tell the story. It is his own story as the brother of the introverted, handicapped Laura and son of the manipulative mother Amanda, who is mourning her own past. The father is long gone and with him the money, love and happiness. But then Tom announces that he wants to bring his colleague Jim
for dinner with him. Amanda is immediately filled with hope: her dream that a man could marry Laura and thus help the family out of their misery seems to be coming true, and Tom would finally be freed from family obligations and could go his own way. So Amanda does everything she can to impress Jim, maneuvering the family into even deeper misery - until the unicorn from Laura's collection of glass animals breaks its horn and with it her heart.

Tennessee Williams, or Thomas Lanier Williams (1911-1983), was born in Columbus, Mississippi, and raised mainly by his mother. He had a complicated relationship with his father. The resulting life circumstances drove him into a nervous breakdown and to form a new identity away from his family. But the family situation provided sufficient material for the playwright's art. His mother became the model for the foolish but strong Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie", his father for the aggressive, drifting Big Daddy in "The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof".