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A Streetcar Named Desire

Sara Pavlak is an actor with big dreams, but one she'd never dared to dream is coming true this summer at the Shawnee Theatre. She just finished with her Masters Degree from Western Illinois University and she's got the role of Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning A Streetcar Named Desire.

George Walker first asked Pavlak about the summer pace at Shawnee. "It's really great in terms of the focus and the energy," she said. "It's my second summer, so I'm used to the fact that while I'm rehearsing, another show is playing, and a third show is in the preliminary production stages."

"I never thought that I'd be playing a role like this so early," Pavlak said. "It's not that Blanche is really that much older than I am. I think of her as about thirty-five and Tennessee Williams says somewhere that she was thirty. But, the emotional trauma that she's experienced and the depth that she's fallen into are really outside my experience."

"I can look back to some of my own losses and emotional moments and I try to magnify them to come up with the appropriate inner feel for Blanche, but it's really a stretch. She's a very complicated and almost cursed, but still incredibly fascinating. It's a great part."

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Directed by Kevin Guthridge

With Sara Pavlak as Blanche Dubois

Shawnee Theatre

June 25-28, 2009

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