The fall season of literary festivals in the South officially begins each year with the Tennessee Williams Tribute and Tour of Victorian Homes in Columbus, Miss., an official city along the Southern Literary Trail, a project funded by AHF, and birthplace of the playwright. This year’s edition begins on September 7 and continues through September 13. Click here for links to complete information regarding the Tribute.
Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis appears in performance on Saturday, September 12, 2009, at 7:30 p.m. in the Whitfield Auditorium on the Mississippi University for Women campus. A “Moon Lake Autograph Party” follows for the Moonstruck actress with music by he Night Call Jazz Trio of Memphis.
Aren’t you somewhat unseasonably dressed for a chilly autumn afternoon?”
Zelda Fitzgerald to Scott Fitzgerald in Clothes for a Summer Hotel by Tennessee Williams
From September 7 until September 10, the Second Line Theatre Company of Orlando will present A Streetcar Named Desire in the Whitfield Auditorium. The week also includes bus tours of the city’s historic district, dinner celebrations and panels of distinguished Tennessee Williams scholars.
For more information, call (662) 328.0222 or (800) 327.2686, and also visit here.
Dr. Kenneth Holditch of the University of New Orleans will speak about “The Dark Wide World: The Landscape of Mississippi in the Plays of Tennessee Williams.” Ken was a close friend of the playwright’s and annually dazzles the audiences in Columbus and Clarksdale, Mississippi, with his memories of “TW.” He is featured in the new BBC Radio documentary produced by Carmel Lonergan and entitled “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
In the documentary, Ken recalls that Tennessee made a remark about being a “high” Episcopalian to Tallulah Bankhead. The Alabama actress brayed back: “Oh, Tennessee, you and I are the only consistently high Episcopalians I have ever known.”
The playwright’s grandfather, Rev. Walter Dakin, was conducting services on March 26, 1911, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Columbus when his daughter Edwina went into labor. A few days later, Tennessee Williams was christened at St. Paul’s, just one of the destinations during the Tennessee Williams Tribute and Tour of Homes.
Photo: Tennessee Williams, southernliterarytrail.org
Written by guest-blogger William Gantt.