Seana McKenna's well acquainted with the work of Tennessee Williams having played six of his most fascinating female protoganists.

McKenna's memorable portrayals include Blanche and Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, Hannah in Night of the Iguana, and Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

She is currently enjoying critical success as Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie at The Stratford Festival.

In 2007 (50 years after its contraversial 1957 Broadway debut) McKenna will reprise her 2005 Stratford Festival role as Lady in Williams' provocative snakeskin and Bayou love ballad Orpheus Descending,.

Directed by her husband Miles Potter, this is a co-production with Mirvish Productions for the Royal Alexandra Theatre .

Orpheus Descending will also be presented procenium stage style in November 2006 at The Manitoba Theatre Centre.

McKenna is eager to soon re-discover and delve deeper into the complex, tortured soul of Lady, and loves her current role as Amanda Wingfield, because the more women McKenna plays in the Tennessee Williams canon, the more she understands what made one of the world's greatest playwrights tick.

I have several Amandas in The Glass Menagerie over the seasons, but I have never seen one like yours before. How much research did you do to find this role?

This is Tennessee Williams' most autobiographical play (Amanda Wingfield is based on Tennessee Williams' mother, Edwina) so having read and having done quite a few Williams plays before, I have read all about his life and his family and his growing up, his childhood. So I had that to draw from, but mostly I just kept going back to the play.

Unlike some Amandas before you, you discovered more comedy within the text.

I think comedy is inherent in Tennessee Williams. He was the man who was in the theatre laughing during A Streetcar Named Desire saying 'Oh that, Blanche, funniest character I ever wrote.." and this is the woman we think is the tragic madwoman.

There is a lot of humour and irony in Tennessee Williams' writing and I think it becomes sentimental when people start playing all the tragedy and everybody's miserable all the time. There has to be something in the family which keeps them together and which makes it so hard to leave. That doesn't mean they don't drive you crazy, doesn't mean you don't want to leave, but at the same time, there are moments of lightness and frivolity there and I think that's what makes it heartbreaking.

There are many layers in this production because you have found so much more in the text and Laura Sara Topham has done the same thing.

Miles desperately wanted to have a Laura that wasn't just a shy, pretty, little thing.

How much has The Glass Menagerie evolved as you have been doing this a while.

We had such a strong rehearsal foundation that the basic interpretation and everything has not altered. I think it has settled into its skin. Somebody said the other day - they came back stage after seeing it - they'd been away for a month or two - and they said 'it's like you guys are playing jazz now'.

The play does have a certain musicality to it.

That's exciting and you can only do that after you have rehearsed and ad-libbed, and rehearsed and rehearsed and played in front of an audience for a long time.

Are you discovering more about Tennessee Williams the man, as you play one iconic character after another?

Each time, you discover more and you think you have some kind of connection or are discovering how his brain works or tidbits about him. What I love about Tennessee Williams was he was not judgmental. He loved people with all their flaws and portrayed them as such, so that you could love them one minute and detest them the next minute and that's what made them human.

Does Amanda compare to any other Williams' women you've played?

She has bits and pieces. I think she's working towards Mrs. Venable (Suddenly Last Summer) but there are bits of the Southern Belle of Blanche (DuBois) in there, but there is the mother (Mrs. Winemiller) in Summer and Smoke) well not really, but the sort of strict, domineering mother that's in Summer and Smoke and there's also the non-stop talking of Maggie (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) but that comes from a very different reason I think. Amanda's just a Southern woman and there are many, many, many types of those.

I would love to see you do Suddenly Last Summer. Violet Venable sends chills down my spine, and the first time I saw the film I really had to think hard about it ... does THAT really happen?

Oh, it's surreal, but it's a neat play. As he (Tom) says in Glass Menagerie ...'As a poet, I have a weakness for symbols'... So when people are actually devoured by poor children (McKenna is laughing softly a little like Violet Venable..) the symbolism is very high.

Going back to The Glass Menagerie, I realized something else about Laura, that she too is a writer.

That's interesting, So many people have gotten so many different things. There was one teenage boy who said "Well, I don't feel badly for Laura because at least she experienced love once for a moment and she'll be fine. Of course, people around him were saying, 'oh no'...

I think Laura Wingfield is just as strong as her mother scamming like that day to day.

Oh absolutely. That's exactly what Miles said. He said this girl (Laura) has an indomitable will.

She is going to all this trouble to get what she wants with this charade so she can be at home listening to her records and polishing her glass. She wants things just not to change.