This month February 9th through the 11th at 7 pm each night, The Averett Theatre apartment will be performing The Glass Menagerie, By Tennesse Williams. The upcoming play stars are your fellow Averett students. One of those stars is Hannah Durando, a junior, who will be playing one of the main roles in this production.

“Glass Menagerie is a memory play that tells the story of a dysfunctional family. It’s told from the memory of Tom Wingfield, a man that wants more from life than just working a boring job at a shoe warehouse. His memories include his overbearing mother Amanda who is constantly trying to relive her glory days, and his older sister Laura, who has a physical handicap and extreme shyness, she spends most of her days playing with her little glass animals. When Tom brings home a gentleman caller for his sister, the fantasies that Laura, Amanda, and Tom have individually created to make life tolerable fall apart around them,” Durando said.

We will all get a chance to watch and be immersed in the memories of one Tom Wingfield as if we were a part of his memories. The theater department works nonstop in all productions they open. Putting in many hours each day of the week through the last bows of their last performance.

“I feel incredibly lucky to be able to be a part of such a hauntingly beautiful show and to be able to help tell this story. I play Laura Wingfield, the older sister of Tom. Laura, like the other characters in the show, is based on Tennessee Williams’ real family. She is based on his sister Rose Williams, who like Laura was incredibly shy, but she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and as a result, was given a frontal lobotomy in 1943. Laura is complex and is described as “nervous”, “ fragile” and “peculiar” but I truly think she might be the strongest character in the story. As a cast, we wanted to be very thorough in our research and how we portray these characters, and we worked with Dr. David Rosenberg, who gave us some incredible insight into these characters,” Durando, said.

The theater apartment can’t wait to see you as those curtains open at the start of every show. Come watch the show as the drama depicts the chaos and inner workings of a family dealing with its problems. As the characters navigate goals, dreams, personal struggles, and the physical constraints of the reality they live in, the connections seem uncannily similar.