Blanche, the true character of Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, the nature of theatricality, "magic" and "realism" , all derive from the tragic character, Blanche DuBois. Blanche is at the same time a theatricalized and self-theatricalizing woman. She lies to herself and others to recreate the world as it should be, in line with her high sensitivity. In this sense, much of his creations arise from a longing for the past, from nostalgia for his lost love, his dignity and his purpose in life. She is haunted by the ghosts of what she has lost and the genteel society of her Belle Reve, her beautiful dream. Blanche arrives at Stella's door with, essentially, a trunk full of costumes from her past. She is intensely self-aware and an artist in the fullest sense of the word. We meet Blanche at a time in her life when few, if any, of her actions do not seem contrived or executed to some degree. In Act I scene 3, she produces a small performance for her suitor, Mitch, in her efforts to seduce him. He turns on the radio to listen to the soundtrack, orders Mitch to "...turn on the light up there now!" and exclaims: “Oh, look! We created the spell (39)!” while dancing like the self-proclaimed star of the improvisational performance. Stella claps from the sidelines as her audience, and Mitch sings and sways to the music. This caricature of a production is repeated in scene 1 of Act II, where Blanche also assigns roles to others. With her somewhat reluctant newspaper collector, she attempts to set the mood as a sort of storyteller. While he promptly responds to her time request, Blanche chooses to digress into a dreamy digression: “This late? You don't like these long rains... middle of paper... Although the bathroom hosts a temporary respite from reality, the boundary between fantasy and reality is essentially permeable on all levels, in both cases. the physical and psychological realms, between the apartment and the street, and even inside the two-room apartment. Although the whimsy and theatricality begin with Blanche, they do not end with her departure from the show. While Blanche leaves with the doctor, Stella still lives in denial. “I couldn't believe her story and continue living with Stanley!” he tells Eunice ahead of time. Stella chooses to live with herself and Stanley by telling herself a lie far bigger than any lie her sister ever invented. The necessity of fantasy in dealing with reality is reinforced one final time, as Eunice assures Stella, “Never believe it. You have to move on, darling. Whatever happens, we must all move forward.”