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Mississippi
Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
The 12th annual Mississippi Delta
Tennessee Williams Festival is scheduled to take
place in Clarksdale on October 15-16, 2004. Williams’s
1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof will be a focus
of this year’s festival, as will Mississippi Delta
influences on the playwright and 21st-century artists.
As in the past, the program will include presentations
by Williams authorities and friends, several performances,
a session with papers by scholars, 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
student actors and a drama competition, with prizes
totaling $2,500 for the winners.
Williams authorities confirmed to
participate in the festival are W. Kenneth Holditch,
Colby Kullman, and Jay Jensen. New York actor Anthony
Herrera and others will portray “Big Daddy” Pollitt
and English actress
Frances O’Connor has been invited to re-create her
role as Maggie the Cat during staged readings from
Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof. Showcasing performance art and innovative
21st-century theatre focusing on today’s Mississippi
Delta influences on artists, Ross Goldstein of Boston
and Seth Barger of New YorkCity will present Crossroads.
The
performance was created in 2003 from sights and
sounds recorded in the Delta and presented in New
York City during
February 2004. Actress and director Erma Duricko
will perform as well as conduct an acting workshop
for high school students. Drama coach Jay Jensen
of Miami, whose career is the subject of a documentary
currently being filmed with Andy Garcia to be screened
at the Sundance Film Festival, also will lead an
acting workshop for students. Larry Turner of Turner’s
Grill in Clarksdale will present “Talking about
the Delta,” a food demonstration and discussion
of specialty and ethnic foods. And Williams’s brother,
Dakin, will also make his annual appearance.
Scholars are invited to submit papers
for possible presentation at the festival. Papers
on any topic related to Williams and his work are
eligible for consideration. Presentations should
be no longer than 20 minutes. Authors whose papers
are selected for presentation will receive free
lodging during the festival and a waiver of the
registration fee. The deadline for submissions is
August 30, 2004. To enter, send a completed paper
(7-8 pages) or an abstract (250 words) to Colby
H. Kullman, Department of English, The University
of Mississippi, University, MS 38677.
The Tennessee Williams Festival Acting
Competition, hosted by Coahoma Community College,
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 given for winning
monologues and scenes, which will be performed for
the festival audience. Prize money will go to schools
of the winners for use with drama activities or
for library books related to theater and literature.
Students, with their teachersponsors, will be given
the opportunity to decide how the prize money will
be spent.
For information on the 2004 festival
and drama competition, write Tennessee Williams
Festival, P.O. Box 1565, Clarksdale, MS 38614-1565;
telephone 662-627-7337.
History
Symposium to Study Manners
Manners,
it is easy to agree, are important to understanding
Southern history, whether one is studying
family life, violence, definitions of race,
voting, speaking, eating, or drinking. But
it is less clear how we should study manners.
Nine scholars will have that opportunity
when the Porter Fortune Jr. History Symposium,
cosponsored by the History Department and
the Center for the Study of Southern Culture,
addresses Manners and Southern History,
October 6-8, 2004.
Speakers
will include Catherine Clinton, author and
editor of 16 books, including Harriet Tubman,
The Plantation Mistress, and Tara Revisited;
Joseph Crespino, of Emory University; author
of works on social and political life in
civil rights-era Mississippi; Lisa L. Dorr,
of the University of Alabama and author
of White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race
in Virginia, 1900-1960; Anya Jabour, of
the University of Montana, author of Marriage
in the Early Republic; Valinda Littlefield,
of the University of South Carolina, author
of works on Southern education; Jennifer
Ritterhouse, of Utah State University, author
of works on raising children in Southern
history; and Charles F. Robinson II, of
the University of Arkansas, author of Dangerous
Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated
South. Commenting will be Jane Dailey, of
Johns Hopkins University, author of Before
Jim Crow: The Politics of Race in Postemancipation
Virginia, and John Kasson, of the University
of North Carolina, author of such works
as Rudeness and Civility: Manners in 19th-Century
Urban America and Houdini, Tarzan, and the
Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the
Challenge of Modernity in America.
Events will be held in the Yerby Center
and will begin at 7:00 p.m on October 6
with Anya Jabour’s talk, “Southern Ladies
and ‘She-Rebels’; or, Femininity in the
Foxhole: Changing Definitions of Womanhood
in the Confederate South.” The program will
continue through Friday afternoon, with
comments by Jane Dailey and John Kasson.
As in the past 28 symposia, events will
be free and open to the public. More details
are available at olemiss.edu/depts/history/symposium/
Events_Symposium.htm.
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