The University of Findlay will present two plays beginning Wednesday, Oct. 31. Productions include “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams and “Brighton Beach Memoirs” by Neil Simon.

The plays will begin at 8 p.m. on alternating evenings in the John and Hester Powell Grimm Theatre.

Tickets are $5 for adults and $3 for students and senior citizens. UF student, faculty and staff tickets are free. Contact the UF Box Office at 419-434-5335 or boxoffice@findlay.edu.

Characters Eugene and Stanley Artwork by UF senior Heather Hochstetler

“A Streetcar Named Desire” will be performed Nov. 1, Nov. 3, Nov. 7, Nov. 9 and Nov. 11. The play reveals the character of Blanche du Bois, a woman whose life has been undermined by her romantic illusions, which lead her to reject the realities of life with which she is faced and which she consistently ignores.

The pressure brought to bear upon her by her sister, with whom she goes to live in New Orleans, intensified by the earthy and extremely “normal” young husband of the latter, leads to a revelation of her tragic self-delusion and, in the end, to madness.

“Brighton Beach Memoirs” will be performed Oct. 31, Nov. 2, Nov. 4, Nov. 8 and Nov. 10. Part one of Neil Simon’s autobiographical trilogy, the play is a portrait of the writer as a Brooklyn teenager in 1937 living with his family in crowded, lower middle-class circumstances. Eugene, the young Neil Simon, is the narrator and central character. His mind is full of fiercely fantasized dreams of baseball and dimly fantasized images of girls.

The play captures a few days in the life of a struggling Jewish household that includes Eugene’s hard-working father, his sharp-tongued mother, his older and vastly more experienced brother Stanley, his widowed aunt and her two young daughters. Family miseries are used to raise such enduring issues as sibling resentment, guilt-ridden parent/child relationships and the hunger for dignity in a poverty-stricken world.