In the final moments of the play A Streetcar Named Desire, I am in the corner of the two-room apartment left with only my lover Mitch, my sister Stella, and her husband and my rapist Stanley. I wait futilely and pathetically for Shep Huntleigh, my millionaire savior whose image I cling to as the only piece of dignity I have left.
There is a knock on the door, and as I scramble to pack my toiletries, a doctor enters. I realize my sister never called Shep, she never believed me about Stanley, and she was sending me to an insane asylum. As I’m pinned to the bed by the nurse, the bed on which I was raped by my brother-in-law, I beg the doctor to let me go. If I am released, I have every intention of running out of the apartment and down the streets of New Orleans. But I don’t. There is a hand being offered to me, one to lift me off the desecrated bed and lead me out the front door, past all those who have betrayed me. The entire play hinges on this question: Does Blanche run out into the world alone or is she somehow able to accept the kindness of a stranger, to trust in another human being again? Then I found the answer in a stranger’s kind eyes.
“Aha,” I thought, “Blanche is full of faith.” And then I kissed the hand offered to me.
From the audience my dad had witnessed his daughter realizing the significance of depending on the kindness of strangers while on stage Blanche’s experiences, destitution, and desires wielded my actions and perspective on what kindness and trust really meant to her, and subsequently to me.
Abby Pierce is a Theater Major at Loyola Marymount University. She also teaches at Piven Theatre in Evanston, IL.