“Stellaaaaaa!”
Marlon Brando first played Stanley Kowalski in 1947 in a stage version of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcare Named Desire. Then, in Kazan’s 1951 film version, Brando let rip one of the most famous hollers in screen history.
Brando’s scream is celebrated in New Orleans this weekend in the Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest, part of the annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.
A young actor and writer named Elena Passarello has written a quirky book of essays about the human voice called Let Me Clear My Throat. It so happens that, among Passarello’s many talents, she won the 2011 Stanley and Stella Shouting Contest. Here’s a youtube video of Passarello’s final round, filmed on an iPhone by an audience member:
After studying herself in the youtube video, Passarello wrote a play-by-play analysis of her own winning screams (from her essay “Harpy”):
I am just a faraway outline of myself … In between the first and second screams, I gasp, and I just keep breathing in, trying to extend the last vowel of “Stella!” through the inhale. The crowd howls at this. After the second “Stella!” I shake my head vigorously, like the scream is a whiskey shot that burns as I swallow it. I have no idea where any of those ideas came from.
The third scream, I think, is the scream that won it. You can hear me lose a battle in my throat. You do not have to assume that I will be mute for days afterward; you know it … I did not tell myself to make this hurt, but there I am, punching lower and lower into myself to see what comes up.
This reminds me of Annie Dillard’s much-quoted exhortation (from The Writing Life) on how to write:
… spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.
I keep going back to watch that video clip of Passarello spending everything’s she’s got, givin’ ‘er, reaching down and finding more. I love her for her balls-out full-throttle woman-roar — for striding out on stage and stripping from the inside out. She’s my proxy, this fiery clown-warrior, purging me of all the times I’ve shoved my own fist down my throat to silence myself.
In her essays, Passarello tells stories about the human vocal chords — how and why they do what they do. She explores the sound of the original rebel yell by Stonewall Jackson’s Union soldiers, Sinatra’s meticulous singing technique, the nuances of the Pittsburgh accent, Howard Dean’s political death scream, and the in-joke among movie sound-effect nerds known as the Wilhelm Scream.
And, fittingly enough, the book even has a soundtrack. Go to the author’s website and listen to CJ Bargamian’s moody tunes.