A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are two of my favorite plays, both written by Tennessee Williams. In “Swinging a Cat,” an essay that discusses how Williams collaborated with director Elia Kazan, scholar Bryan Parker writes:
A recurrent disagreement between Williams and Kazan…was that Kazan…considered that events should be shown to alter character, whereas Williams believed that [events] could only reveal what was basic and unchanging in a personality.
This is an enlightening point. Williams’s plays succeed because the unchanging characters have a magnetic authenticity. It turns out events do not change the core character; instead, they reveal how a character always was. For example, Stanley’s rape of Blanche completely alters Blanche’s outward behavior, but what remains for the reader is the sensation that Blanche has “always depended on the kindness of strangers” — and it is the twistedness of how that hasn’t changed that wrings the reader’s heart.
EDIT (2018-03-27): I have discovered an AMAZING episode of The Simpsons with a hilarious parody of streetcar. If you know the play, it is so worth your time.