1997 Tennessee Williams Festival and Acting Competition Announced

The fifth annual Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival will take place in Clarksdale on October 16-18, 1997. As in the past, the festival program will include presentations by Williams authorities and friends, several performances, a session with papers by graduate students, and tours of the house and neighborhood where the playwright lived as a child. Also scheduled in conjunction with the festival are workshops for teachers and for student actors and a drama competition, with prizes totaling $4,000 for the winners.

The Tennessee Williams Festival Acting Competition is open to high school students in Mississippi. The competition includes two acting categories, monologues and scenes. All material must be drawn from the plays of Tennessee Williams. Each monologue is to be two minutes or less, and each scene is to be between five and ten minutes and involve any number of characters.

Cash prizes are $300 (first place) and $200 (second place) for monologues and $1,000 (first place) and $500 (second place) for scenes. Winning monologues and scenes will be performed for the festival audience. Prize money will go to schools of the winners for use with drama activities or library books related to theatre or literature. Students, with their teacher-sponsors, will be given the opportunity to decide how the prize money will be spent.

The acting competition will take place at Coahoma Community College on Saturday, October 18. Two workshops are also scheduled for that day. Cindy Gold, formerly with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and now a theatre professor at the University of Mississippi, will offer an acting workshop for high school students. Colby Kullman, professor of English at the University of Mississippi, will conduct a workshop for teachers on the topic "Teaching Tennessee Williams."

For information on the 1997 festival and drama competition, write Tennessee Williams Festival, P.O. Box 1565, Clarksdale, MS 38614-1565; telephone 601-627-7337.