In the stage directions for the opening scene of his play A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams provides a wealth of background information that's important to understanding the setting, characters, and action of the play.

SCENE ONE

The exterior of a two-story corner building on a street in New Orleans which is named Elysian Fields and runs between the L & N tracks and the river.

The perception of New Orleans for the people who don't live there is of the old-world Southern city famous for the never-ending party atmosphere of Bourbon Street in the lively French Quarter of the city, and the annual, pre-Lenten "Mardi Gras" celebration. In contract, the setting of A Streetcar Named Desire is in a very different working-class area of New Orleans.

In Greek mythology, the "Elysian Fields" (also known as "Elysium") is a place of peace and happiness where the souls of heroic and virtuous people are sent when they die.

Symbolically, the "Elysian Fields" is a place that Blanche Du Bois is searching for at the beginning of the play. Blanche arrived at Elysian Fields on the streetcar named "Desire," which is symbolic of Blanche's motivation for coming to New Orleans, one of the major themes in the play.

It also foreshadows Blanche's fate. Even though Blanche hopes to reach the elusive Elysian Fields, at the end of the play she's taken away to a sanatorium, a symbolic representation of the mythological hades, where lesser mortals reside after death.

According to Homer, the Elysian Fields were located on the western edge of the earth, literally "at the ends of the earth." The street, Elysian Fields, "runs between the L & N tracks and the river," symbolically and literally putting the street, and the characters of the play, on "the other side of the tracks."

The section is poor but, unlike corresponding sections in other American cities, it has a raffish charm. The houses are mostly white frame, weathered gray, with rickety outside stairs and galleries and quaintly ornamented gables. This building contains two flats, upstairs and down. Faded white stairs ascend to the entrances of both.

Upstairs, where Eunice Hubbell lives, is a symbolic haven for Stella Kowalski when she's fighting in the downstairs flat with her husband, Stanley. Even so, the upstairs flat is no haven for Eunice from her abusive husband, Steve.

It is first dark of an evening early in May. The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay. You can almost feel the warm breath of the brown river beyond the river warehouses with their faint redolences of bananas and coffee.

Williams introduces the quality of light as one of the recurring motifs of the play and draws a distinction between the reality and the appearance of decay in the neighborhood.

In the light of day, the houses in the neighborhood are "weathered gray," with "rickety," faded white stairs leading to each flat. In the early evening light, the neighborhood appears almost beautiful.

Williams also introduces a sensory element to the setting that is often missing from other plays. He describes the "redolences," the smells, of the neighborhood.

"The warm breath of the brown river" gives a sense of the stench of the polluted river, into which the dirty and decaying byproducts of the city are dumped. This stench is tempered by the smells of bananas and coffee coming from the warehouses for two of the products closely associated with the daily commerce of New Orleans.

A corresponding air is evoked by the music of Negro entertainers at a barroom around the corner. In this part of New Orleans you are practically always just around the corner, or a few doors down the street, from a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This "Blue Piano" expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here.

"Blue Piano" is a form of improvised jazz that is imbued with the emotions of the performer (the "blues"), much as the play is imbued with the emotions of the characters.

The "Blue Piano" music is heard throughout the play as background music for the events of the play. The music symbolizes the reality and the hardship of life in New Orleans, but it also symbolizes the "life goes on" and "enjoy it while you can" spirit of the people of the city.

The reality of life expressed in the "Blues Piano" music is often juxtaposed against Blanche's unrealistic perception of the world, and of herself. Blanche's lives in a dream world, an illusion of reality.

Ultimately, reality prevails. The "Blue Piano" music is the last music that the audience hears as Blanche is led offstage at the end of the play, still depending "on the kindness of strangers" to help her cope with the reality of her life.

Above the music of the "Blue Piano" the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping.

Williams emphasizes how the "Blue Piano" music, and the reality it symbolizes, is an integral part of the life of the characters in the play.