In 1992, actress Jessica Lange, who had virtually no stage experience took on Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

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New Orleans has a long history with the film industry, functioning as the setting for classic films such as A Streetcar Named Desire, filmed in 1951.

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Other messages recounted frolicking with a pair of dolphins, which she named Stella and Stanley, the doomed lovers in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire.

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Notable productions for the stage include Miss Julie, Twelfth Night, Medea and A Streetcar Named Desire for the Royal Dramatic Theatre and the City Theatre in Stockholm.

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Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire, " for instance, was written for a cast of 12, while Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" requires 13 actors, eight men and five women.

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The National Theatre won the theatre award for its production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, while the dance prize went to the Scottish Ballet for A Streetcar Named Desire.

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Unfortunately, the prospect of America's space program relying - like a fading superpower version of A Streetcar Named Desire's Blanche DuBois - on the "kindness of strangers" is the inevitable result of programmatic decisions being taken by the Obama administration.

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Among his recent roles are Emile de Becque in the Lincoln Center revival of "South Pacific" that recently toured Australia (a role that has been played by opera singers), and Stanley Kowalski in the coming modern-opera production of "A Streetcar Named Desire" at Chicago's Lyric Opera and New York's Carnegie Hall in March.

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He was recently offered the part of Stanley Kowalski in a revival of "Streetcar Named Desire" in London, but plans fell through.

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