Conversation

Sunday, March 29
2:30 – 3:45 PM—Festival Closing Event
FROM THE PAGE TO THE STAGE: CALL ME IZZY ROUNDTABLE
Cash bar available, so grab a cocktail so we can toast to Tennessee and close out our 40th anniversary!

Go behind the scenes for a glimpse of what it’s like for a playwright to see the words on the page become lines spoken by actors on the stage. Our focus is Call Me Izzy, the Broadway tour de force that brought Jean Smart back to the stage. We begin with music: Adam Lozoya, ragtime virtuoso and composer, will play from the score of Call Me Izzy, composed by Grammy and Oscar-winning musician T-Bone Burnett and David Mansfield, a long-time collaborator of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. The show’s playwright, Jamie Wax, and two-time Tony award nominee Johanna Day will present some selections from the poetry and monologues of the play. They will be joined by producer Charles D. Urstadt for a lively conversation hosted by Festival fave and Obie winner, actress Brenda Currin.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, free and open to the public.

Saturday, March 28
4:30 – 6 PM—Cocktail Event & Conversation
HISTORIC HAPPY HOUR
TWFest is celebrating our 40th anniversary this year! How did the Festival get started? Why focus on Tennessee Williams? How has the Festival changed over the decades? We have two board members who have been with us throughout the years and know the answers to those questions and much more. Join Peggy Scott Laborde as she interviews Errol Laborde, who was there when the idea for the Festival was conceived and served as our founding board president. They will chat in the courtyard of the Celestine Hotel among the very spaces where Williams worked on A Streetcar Named Desire. It’s also the spot where Dick Cavett interviewed Williams in 1974. The Celestine’s Tennessee Williams Parlor was once Room 10 of the historic Maison de Ville, Williams’ favorite room when he stayed there. The event is free and you can purchase a cocktail to enjoy during the interview, including a Festival favorite in the early years—the mint julep!
The Celestine Hotel, 727 Toulouse Street, free and open to the public.

(You can select this event to add it to your schedule, but it’s free!)

Saturday, March 28
4 – 5:15 PM—CONVERSATION
CONVERSATION WITH THOMAS MALLON & MARTIN SHERMAN
LED BY MAUREEN CORRIGAN
When fact is stranger than fiction, how do you tell a story that’s compelling, empathetic, and true? NPR’s Maureen Corrigan leads a discussion about interweaving humanity with history. Thomas Mallon is the author of The Very Heart of It, a New Yorker Best Book of the Year that chronicles his journal entries around New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, a gay coming of age story that takes readers through the AIDs crisis and beyond. He is also the author of nonfiction works about diaries, plagiarism, and letters, as well as a substantial body of work in historical fiction, from the Reagan years to Hurricane Katrina. Martin Sherman is the author of On the Boardwalk, a memoir that takes the reader on a darkly humorous journey of the author’s life growing up in a Jewish immigrant family and ending with his success on Broadway as the writer of the play Bent. Sherman is also known for his stage adaptations of Tennessee Williams’ The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone and E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or Lit Pass or VIP Pass.