Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival Brings Scholars and Fans to Clarksdale

Glorious Hill in Two River County, set among the Sunflower and Mississippi Rivers, is the mythical literary kingdom of at least a dozen of Tennessee Williams's plays. It survives today as Clarksdale in Coahoma County, also set among the Sunflower and Mississippi Rivers. The real towns of Lyon, Tutwiler, and Friars Point are just a few miles away, although the plague that Dr. John Buchanan (of Summer and Smoke) found a cure for while working in Lyon is long gone from the area. Maggie and Brick, Blanche, and Baby Doll; the Cutrers, the Wingfields, and the Veneables; the railroad, the depot, the river, and even an angel statue are all a part of Coahoma County history. The Cutrer mansion survives, the Clarksdale Press Register continues to turn out the news, Moon Lake Casino (Uncle Henry's Place) serves as a bed and breakfast as well as a gourmet restaurant, and the Hopson Plantation Commissary hosts the festival's multicultural ethnic buffet.

Now planning for its fifth year, Clarksdale's Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival has grown substantially in quality and size each year of its existence. Founded in 1993 by Panny Mayfield, who directed the festival for its first three years, the 1996 edition (October 17-19) was codirected by Betty Sue Maynard and Judy Flowers, with both the Clarksdale community and the Coahoma Community College (CCC) campus skillfully cooperating to orchestrate a first-class festival.

Erma Duricko's Actors Circle and 4-Tenn Productions of New York and Pennsylvania brought their acclaimed production of A Streetcar Named Desire to Clarksdale as the centerpiece of the 1996 festival. Working with local actors, technicians, and set designers from the Clarksdale Community Theatre and CCC students and professionals, they put together a powerful, gripping, and unforgettable production of Streetcar that was imaginatively brilliant as directed by Tim "Ziggy" Brown, with Duricko serving as artistic director. Duricko's Blanche DuBois captured the fragile vulnerability of Williams's guilt-ridden wanderer who descends into madness as she is deprived of her romantic dreams and pretenses and forcibly made to embrace her animal nature. Christopher Williams's Stanley Kowalski roared with the ferocity of a lion and then cuddled up to Stella, "good as a lamb." Thanks to imaginative directing and superb acting, a background cast of Clarksdale residents played out the horrors of the street scenes in the French Quarter, successfully combining surrealistic and expressionistic actions, cries, and snatches of conversation to create a hellish underworld appropriate to the main action of the play.

Highlighting the festival each year are the scenes from Tennessee Williams's one-act plays acted out on the porches of Clarksdale's old homes on Clark and Court Streets. The 1996 presentations were of such high quality that competition is being considered for this year, with award money going to the theatre companies, colleges, and universities involved. Dakin Williams, Tennessee Williams's younger brother, joined this part of the program by giving readings from his brother's poetry in front on the angel statue at Clarksdale's Tennessee Williams Park.

A Friday afternoon celebrity presentation by poet, actress, and educator Billie Jean Young was dominated by her one-woman performance of Fannie Lou Hamer: This Little Light, a dramatic monologue that electrified the audience at CCC as she traced important events in the life of one of the civil rights movement's truly outstanding heroines. After seeing such talent in operation, it is no surprise to learn that Billie Jean Young was honored in 1990 by Essence Magazine as a "Legend in Our Time." Under the capable direction of Lindy McLeod, the CCC Choir provided inspirational music that added significantly to the power of Young's performance.

For a second year, the festival sponsored an acting competition for high school students in the areas of monologues and scenes. The winners took home substantial checks to enable their schools to buy books for their libraries, to help finance theatre productions, or to provide travel funding to see professional theatre productions. Enthusiasm ran high with more than double the number of competitors as last year, thanks to the recruiting and organizing efforts of Linda Watson and Cindy Gold. The first-place scene competition award of $1,000 went to Matt King and Kelli Kendrick of Lafayette High School (Leah Shollenberger, faculty sponsor) while the second-place prize of $500 was captured by Richard Boyd and Bethany Cooksey of Brookhaven High School (Carol Clanton, faculty sponsor). A $300 first-place monologue award was won by Emily Sindelar of Oxford High School (Christopher Schanger, faculty sponsor) with Brookhaven High School student David Dykes earning the second-place prize of $200. An honorable mention award was given to Kondra Williams of Lafayette High School for her monologue. After the acting competition, Cindy Gold directed an actor's workshop while Colby Kullman led a discussion group of teachers who focused on teaching A Streetcar Named Desire.

Four panels of speakers provided critical observations on Streetcar, insights into the world of Tennessee Williams, and nostalgic remembrances of "Tom." The first panel on Thursday afternoon was designed to give audiences attending the festival production of Streetcar helpful critical responses to the play as well as a variety of performance theories concerning its production. Panelists for this discussion were Cindy Gold, Kenneth Holditch, and Colby Kullman. Friday's morning panel, moderated by Kenneth Holditch, consisted of more formal scholarly papers concerning the life and writings of Tennessee Williams. Professors Ralph Voss, Allean Hale, Nancy Tischler, and Al Devlin spoke about such subjects as Williams's fictional world of Glorious Hill in Two River County and the friendly rivalry that existed between Tennessee Williams and Kansas playwright William Inge. Friday afternoon's activities included a panel of graduate student scholars who presented their research on Tennessee Williams: Leslie Durham of the University of Kansas spoke on "Problems and Possibilities: Cross-Racial Casting in 27 Wagons, Baby Doll, and Tiger Tail"; Greg Carpenter of the University of Mississippi, on "Tennessee Williams and August Wilson: Dislocated, Lost, and Searching for Home"; Genie Bryan of Southwestern Louisiana University, on "The Struggle of 'Unavoidable Transgression' and the Search for Peace in The Night of the Iguana"; and Scott Higginbotham of the University of Mississippi, on "A World of Light and Shadow: Myth and Modernity in Orpheus Descending." Saturday morning's panel was conducted by area residents who fondly remembered Tennessee Williams.

Once again, the Mississippi Delta's best music and distinctive food joined with quality theatre to make this festival truly memorable. The opening banquet at Uncle Henry's Place starred Sarah and George Wright's gourmet food and Kenneth Lackey's music, which drew dancers from age 2 to 82 to the dance floor. In keeping with festival tradition, an informal buffet Friday night at Hopson Plantation Commissary celebrated Coahoma County's rich heritage and multicultural cuisine by featuring local ethnic specialties--Italian ravioli, Greek baklava, Lebanese kibbi, Chinese shrimp and snow peas, and Southern soul food. Black music by Clarksdale's Wesley Jefferson Band fit in perfectly with the commissary atmosphere of Hopson's. New to the festival was a concluding banquet on Saturday night at the Cutrer mansion, with entertainment by the Clarksdale Wind Ensemble, an event that included the ghost of past parties hosted by this mansion when the Clarks and Cutrers entertained their friends at elegant dinners with Japanese lanterns lining the grounds.

Fulbright scholar Natalia Vyssotskaya from the Ukraine spent the spring of 1995 in Oxford and traveled to Clarksdale in order to tour Tennessee Williams country. At that time, she reported that he was the second most performed playwright in her country, being overshadowed only by their own genius of modern drama, Anton Chekhov. The 1996 festival fans included Koreans, Japanese, Germans, Norwegians, and Englishmen as well as participants from every corner of America. It is no surprise to learn that Tennessee Williams is as popular abroad as he is at home.

Plans for next October's Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival are already under way. For information, contact the Clarksdale Chamber of Commerce at 601-627-7337 or 800-626-3764, or write to the Tennessee Williams Festival Committee, Box 1565, Clarksdale, MS 38614-1565.

Colby H. Kullman