SATURDAY TWFest EVENTS
9 AM – 4 PM
Festival Headquarters open to pick up VIP and LitPasses, purchase Fest merchandise, and to buy tickets. Save time by buying tickets in advance online at www.tennesseewilliams.net/tickets.
Saturday, March 23
8:30 – 9:45 AM—Special Event
BOOKS AND BEIGNETS WITH GARY RICHARDS
This year’s focus shifts to beloved fiction writer Eudora Welty (1909-2001). A native of Jackson, Mississippi, she explored the US South in novels such as Delta Wedding, Losing Battles, and The Optimist’s Daughter, but scholars and readers alike often feel that her most brilliant work was with her short stories. The group will sample a half-dozen of these to get a taste for Welty’s sly humor, exquisite style, and impressive range: “Lily Daw and the Three Ladies,” “Why I Live at the P.O.,” “A Curtain of Green,” “Powerhouse,” “Moon Lake,” and “No Place for You, My Love,” the last of which is set in New Orleans and the coastal areas of southeastern Louisiana. They are available in The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (ISBN: 978-1328625649).
3rd Block Depot Kitchen + Bar, 316 Chartres Street, $35 or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
10 – 11:15 AM—Literary Discussion
FROM THE WRITING ROOM TO THE THEATER: ADAPTING BOOK TO SCREEN
What’s it like to see your book make it to the screen as a film or television series? How do writers navigate the world of film? Our panelists include Sascha Rothschild, author of Blood Sugar and an Emmy-nominated screenwriter who has worked on GLOW, The Bold Type, The BabySitters Club, and The Carrie Diaries. She also adapted her article “How to Get Divorced by 30,” into a screenplay for Universal Studios. You can see Sidney Thompson’s Bass Reeves Trilogy of western novels as a series now airing on Paramount. Justin Torres’ award-winning debut novel, We the Animals, became a feature-length film. M.O. Walsh’s charming The Big Door Prize, became a mini-series for Apple TV, heading into its second season this April. Clint Bowie of the New Orleans Film Society moderates the discussion.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
10 – 11:15 AM–Literary Discussion
GREAT STORIES FROM NEW ORLEANS INSTITUTIONS
Every city with a long history has stewards who care for its treasures, whether they be institutions or ideas. In The Building of the National World War II Museum, founder and president Gordon “Nick” Mueller describes the inception and growth of what has become the city’s leading museum. Robert Becker, in New Orleans City Park: From Tragedy to Triumph, chronicles his 20-year tenure as CEO of City Park and the hard work of staff and volunteers to bring the park through Katrina and COVID and insure its financial security. Journalist and historian Errol Laborde celebrates unique New Orleans moments in New Orleans cultural history in When Rex Met Zulu. Documentarian Peggy Scott Laborde, whose most recent work is Literary New Orleans, moderates.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
10 – 11:15 AM—Literary Discussion
PARABLES OF A WORLD CORRUPTED—POLITICS IN THE PLAYS OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
In a 1967 interview, when Tennessee Williams was asked if he ever wrote directly about the struggle for civil rights or about the American war in Viet Nam, he replied, “I am not a direct writer, I am always an oblique writer, if I can be; I want to be allusive, I don’t want to be one of those people who hits the nail on the head all the time.” The playwright’s answer reinforced a longstanding idea that Williams was not a political writer when, in fact, politics are woven into the fabric of everything he wrote—often quite directly! This panel will examine some of Williams’ politics both onstage and off, looking at the most overt examples of politics in plays such as Camino Real, Sweet Bird of Youth, Orpheus Descending, and The Red Devil Battery Sign, as well as the powerful ways in which politics surround and support narratives in his other plays. At times the indirect approach can be an even more potent way to reach an audience and is found in plays as divergent as The Glass Menagerie, Stairs to the Roof, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Green Eyes. The panelists will include Thomas Keith, Tom Mitchell, and Bess Rowen. Benjamin Gillespie will moderate.
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
10 AM – NOON—Walking Tour
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS LITERARY WALKING TOUR
New Orleans, and especially the French Quarter, played a vital role in shaping Tennessee Williams. When he came here for the first time, he was Tom Williams. When he left here a couple of months later, he was known as Tennessee, having undergone a tremendous change in his personal life and his creativity. A man perpetually on the move, Tennessee considered this city his “spiritual home” and had at least eight residences in its famous neighborhoods. Visit the homes and hangouts where he lived, worked, and returned to throughout his adult life, beloved spots that helped to make Tennessee America’s greatest playwright.
Other dates include: Friday, March 22, 2 – 4 PM, Saturday, March 23, 2 – 4 PM, and Sunday, March 24, 10 AM – Noon and 2 – 4 PM
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Parlor, $30 or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
11:30 – 12:45 PM—Literary Discussion
MAKING AN ENTRANCE: NEW FICTION VOICES WITH STYLE
Readers love finding a new writer who has a fresh and exciting style or captivating point of view, and we’re excited to welcome these new voices in fiction. Novelist and poet Chin-Sun Lee’s first book, Upcountry, about a couple who moves from New York City to a small country town, with all the social change that that implies, was listed among Publishers Weekly‘s Big Indie Books of Fall 2023. Annell Lopez‘s debut short story collection, I’ll Give You a Reason, about the lives of immigrants in New Jersey, is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize from the Feminist Press Award, and will appear in April. Jess Armstrong is the author of The Curse of Penryth Hall, the winner of the Mystery Writers of America/ Minotaur First Crime Novel Competition. Julia Malye takes readers back to the French colonial Gulf Coast in The Pelican Girls, a novel about strong women based in historical reality. Nick Medina, a member of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, weaves tribal myths into the contemporary world of crime and casinos in Sisters of the Lost Nation and Indian Burial Ground. Moderated by New Orleans writer, C. Morgan Babst, author of The Floating World.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
11:30 – 12:45 PM—Literary Discussion
THE OTHER SIDE OF DESIRE: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS ON LIFE, LOVE, AND DEATH
When Blanche DuBois arrives in the French Quarter of New Orleans in the first scene of A Streetcar Named Desire, she tells Eunice, “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!” So, from the very beginning of the play, we are reminded that death and desire have a symbiotic relationship. Whether dramas, comedies, full-length, or one-acts, death is present in all of Williams’ plays, both onstage and off, and so is life. For Williams, sexual desire is part of the life force, the urge to live, and so a counterbalance to the inevitability of death. This panel will explore the many ways Williams deals with death and life in his work. Scenes and characters that will be examined come from plays including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Rose Tattoo, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Vieux Carré, A House Not Meant to Stand, Kingdom of Earth, I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow, The Mutilated, The Day on Which a Man Dies, and Something Cloudy, Something Clear, to name just a few. Panelists include Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Pope, Augustin J Correro, Margit Longbrake, and Annette Saddik, moderated by Thomas Keith.
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
1 – 2:15 PM—Literary Discussion
WRITING SOUTHERN GOTHIC IN MODERN NEW ORLEANS
Exploring themes such as religious intensity, moral disorder, ancestral homes in resplendent decay, systemic racism, endemic poverty, and the encroachment of the supernatural on everyday life, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams, and Carson McCullers pioneered this often romanticized and occasionally parodied genre into the American consciousness in the early 20th-century. Now, in the 21st, writers like Jesmyn Ward, Karen Russell, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Toni Morrison have dynamically furthered those first explorations, in many instances reinventing them entirely. This mixed-genre panel of fiction writers, essayists, and poets will seek to unearth Southern Gothic then and now, posing such questions as: Where do we find ourselves on the so-called pantheon of early-to-mid 20th-century Southern Gothic writers? What does it mean to write Southern Gothic in the most Gothic city in America? At what point does Southern Gothic go from being an exploration of a society in decay to a fetishization of that same decay? How do we expand our definitions of Southern Gothic to take in the “Global South,” to include Latin American and Caribbean works of Southern Gothic, as well? How have the objects of social critique in Southern Gothic literature (racism, classism, evangelicalism, feudalism, criminality) shifted over time, illuminating new corners of a region in freefall? Come get a little creepy—but a little thoughtful, too—with panelists Anya Groner, Carolyn Hembree, Alex Jennings, and Adrian Van Young, moderated by Brad Richard.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
1 – 2:15 PM—Featured Conversation
SEEING OUR HISTORY ON THE PAGE
Historian, author and journalist Errol Laborde, whose most recent book is When Rex Met Zulu and Other New Orleans Experiences, and John Lawrence, former director of Museum Programs and Curator of Photographs at the Historic New Orleans Collection, engage in a wide-ranging discussion based on John’s book, Louisiana Lens: Photographs from the Historic New Orleans Collection (2023), touching on historical topics, the nature of photography, building a photographic collection for research use, photographers working in Louisiana, and “reading” photographs in ways that transcend their content.
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
1 – 3 PM—Walking Tour
HISTORY OF QUEER NIGHTLIFE IN NEW ORLEANS TOUR
A 2-hour deep dive into the joy, heartbreak, and history of the New Orleans Queer Underground from the 1850s to the present. Follow the stories of sex worker street gangs, drag queens working for the mafia, jazz artists, and the queer community of today to discover the ways the queer underbelly of New Orleans has shaped the history of the entire world. With over 900 five star reviews, calling the tour “hilarious,” “deeply researched,” and “a life changing experience,” the tour restores New Orleans to its rightful place in Queer History as one of the most dynamic cultures shaping what it even means to be queer. All tours are led by artist, community organizer, and alleged spirit medium Quinn L Bishop. Total tour walking distance is just under 2 miles.
Other dates include: Thursday – Friday, March 21 – 22, and Sunday, March 24, 1 – 3 PM
Crossing Bar, 439 Dauphine Street, $35 or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
2 – 4 PM—Walking Tour
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS LITERARY WALKING TOUR
New Orleans, and especially the French Quarter, played a vital role in shaping Tennessee Williams. When he came here for the first time, he was Tom Williams. When he left here a couple of months later, he was known as Tennessee, having undergone a tremendous change in his personal life and his creativity. A man perpetually on the move, Tennessee considered this city his “spiritual home” and had at least eight residences in its famous neighborhoods. Visit the homes and hangouts where he lived, worked, and returned to throughout his adult life, beloved spots that helped to make Tennessee America’s greatest playwright.
Other dates include: Friday, March 22, 2 – 4 PM, Saturday, March 23, 10 AM – Noon, and Sunday, March 24, 10 AM – Noon and 2 – 4 PM
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Parlor, $30 or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
2:30 – 3:45—Literary Discussion
HISTORY IS MY MUSE: FINDING PRESENT INSPIRATION IN THE PAST
History is a gold mine for the discerning writer, prospecting for nuggets from the distant—or recent—past in archives and the historical record. Fordham University professor Edward Cahill takes us back to the pre-Stonewall era in Disorderly Men, a story of a police raid on a gay bar and its complicated consequences. Julia Malye tells a tale of resourceful women, “volunteers” shipped from France to the Louisiana Territory, in Pelican Girls. Louisiana State University professor and author Maurice Carlos Ruffin imagines what his female ancestors would have done to resist the Confederacy in the antebellum era in The American Daughters. Wendy Chin-Tanner draws on her father’s experience as a patient in what was then known as the leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, for her first novel, King of the Armadillos. And Colm Toíbín has crafted many novels—Brooklyn and the forthcoming Long Island among them—from the rich history of Ireland and New York. Miles Harvey, author of The King of Confidence moderates.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
2:30 – 3:45—Film and Discussion
LITERARY NEW ORLEANS
The city of New Orleans has served as a setting for many of the world’s most famous literary works, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Interview with the Vampire and A Confederacy of Dunces.This documentary takes an up-close look at the locally written word over a more than three-century history. Included are interviews with Anne Rice, Tennessee Williams and Thelma Toole, the mother of John Kennedy Toole. Among the authors and literary experts interviewed are Edwin Blair, Douglas Brinkley, Nancy Dixon, Rien Fertel, Dr. Kenneth Holditch, Walter Isaacson, Susan Larson, T. R. Johnson, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Dr. Mona Lisa Saloy and Kalamu Ya Salaam. Produced and narrated by Peggy Scott Laborde, who will be on hand for a brief discussion following the showing of the program.
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
2:30 PM—Theatre
THE FIRE WEEDS PRESENTS:
OUTRAGED HEARTS: THE PRETTY TRAP AND INTERIOR: PANIC
Female-driven theatre company, The Fire Weeds, presents their debut production in association with the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival. Come discover the rarely produced prototypes for American classics The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Co-Directed by Jaclyn Bethany and Lindsey Neville, Outraged Hearts is a powerful, immersive evening featuring two early Tennessee Williams’ one-act plays. Get ready to be captivated by Williams’ unique storytelling and unforgettable characters with an unflinching feminist gaze that promises to be a night of raw emotions and powerful performances. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience the magic of Tennessee Williams.
Performance Schedule: Thursday – Friday, March 21 – 22, 7:30 PM; Saturday – Sunday, March 23 – 24, 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM; Tuesday – Friday, March 26 – 29, 7:30 PM; Saturday, March 30, 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM.
Big Couch New Orleans, 1045 Desire Street, $35 adults and $12 for students, or VIP Pass. Tickets at https://outragedhearts.bpt.me/
Saturday, March 23
4 – 5:15 PM—Literary Discussion
LEGENDS OF BURLESQUE
Over the last century, vaudeville’s naughtier cousin, burlesque, has become a truly American art form, full of irreverence and dynamism. Though considered a sultry and bawdy form of entertainment, by the 1950s it was practically mainstream, especially in New Orleans with its main entertainment strip lined with nightclubs featuring both national and local dancers. Through memoirs and interviews, Historic New Orleans Collection curator Nina Bozak remembers some of these dancers in their own words from memoirs and interviews and through images of their signature acts. Hear about Blaze Starr’s first time on stage as a stripper, the lesson Kalantan learned from Lili St. Cyr, and the connection between Rita Alexander and New Orleans legendary drummer Smokey Johnson. See a photographic series of Stormy Lawrence’s signature number and watch Sally Rand’s famous Bubble Dance. And be titillated by a special performance by one of New Orleans’s current burlesque legends, Bella Blue!
This event is sponsored by The Ethel and Herman L. Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies.
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
4—5:15 PM—Featured Conversation
MAUREEN CORRIGAN AND COLM TÓIBÍN
Maureen Corrigan, the beloved and influential book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and author of Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading and And So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures, appears in conversation with the prolific and award-winning author, Colm Toíbín, known for The Master, The Magician, The Blackwater Lightship, Brooklyn, Nora Webster, and many other novels and works of nonfiction. Imagine two Irish storytellers, sharing a Catholic background and a love of New York and fine literature, settling in for a long chat.
Hotel Monteleone, Lobby Level, Royal Salon, $10 or LitPass or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
7 – 8:30 PM—Theatre
MENDACITY: ACT 2 OF CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Three-time Emmy winner Christian Jules le Blanc (The Young and the Restless) and actor/producer Matt de Rogatis, of Ruth Stage, reprise their critically acclaimed Off Broadway roles of “Big Daddy” and “Brick” in this one of a kind experience! le Blanc and de Rogatis will perform an edited version of Act 2 of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof from their 2022 New York City production. Afterwards, the two actors will participate in a talkback about bringing this Pulitzer Prize-winning play to the Off Broadway stage. Afterwards, David Kaplan, curator/cofounder of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, will moderate a talkback with the actors.
“There is only one aristocracy. The aristocracy of passion.” —Tennessee Williams
Hotel Monteleone, Queen Anne Ballroom, $20 or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
7 – 8:30 PM—Theatre
THE LAST BOHEMIA FRINGE FESTIVAL PRESENTS:
TENNESSEE RISING: THE DAWN OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams, a solo play written and performed by Jacob Storms and originally directed for the stage by Alan Cumming, explores the formative period from 1939 – 1945 in which an unknown writer named Tom becomes the acclaimed playwright known as Tennessee, wherein his most iconic character emerges: himself.
Includes a talkback with Jacob Storms led by Augustin J Correro.
The Twilight Room, 2240 St. Claude Avenue, $35 cocktail table, $20 general admission, or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
7:30 PM—Theatre
THE TENNESSEE WILLIAMS THEATRE COMPANY OF NEW ORLEANS PRESENTS:
KINGDOM OF EARTH BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
TWTC opens its eighth season with the Tennessee Williams thriller, Kingdom Of Earth. A dark, stormy night with the levee soon to burst amplifies the tension of the Ravenstock estate where Lot has returned home for a showdown with his half-brother Chicken. Between these two forces of nature, Myrtle finds herself suspended on a tightrope of desire, desperation, and danger. Will she, or any of the trio, survive the night? And what is there to fight over when the water threatens to wash the world away?
Performance Schedule: Thursday – Saturday, March 21 – 23 at 7:30 PM; Sunday, March 24 at 3 PM.
The Marquette Theatre, Loyola University New Orleans, 6363 St. Charles Avenue. Tickets at www.twtheatrenola.com.
Saturday, March 23
7:30 PM—Theatre
DELGADO COMMUNITY COLLEGE THEATRE DEPARTMENT PRESENTS:
FIVE BY TENN
We travel through five short plays by one of America’s greatest playwrights meeting characters such as Mrs. Hardwicke-Moore, a tenant in a New Orleans cockroach-infested boarding house and a young couple desperately in love trying to put things together, as they fall apart. We are introduced to New Orleans visitors during Mardi Gras in the 1890’s who hear about an encounter with Lord Byron. There is Bertha, a “scarlet lady” who has fallen on hard times, and, finally, Miss Dorothy Simple, proprietor of the Simple Notions Shop in Primandproper, Mass., who has barricaded her house and heart behind a double row of petunias. The five Tennessee Williams one-acts are The Lady of Larkspur Lotion, Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen, Lord Byron’s Love Letter, Hello from Bertha, and The Case of the Crushed Petunias.
Performance Schedule: Thursday – Saturday, March 21 – 23 at 7:30 PM All curtain times are at 7:30pm.
Tickets at https://www.dcc.edu/academics/liberal-arts-social-sciences-education/programs/theatre/plays/default.aspx
Timothy K. Baker Theatre, Delgado Community College, Bldg. 1 Room 106W, 615 City Park Avenue. $12 or VIP Pass.
Saturday, March 23
7:30 PM—Theatre
THE FIRE WEEDS PRESENTS:
OUTRAGED HEARTS: THE PRETTY TRAP AND INTERIOR: PANIC
Female-driven theatre company, The Fire Weeds, presents their debut production in association with the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival. Come discover the rarely produced prototypes for American classics The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Co-Directed by Jaclyn Bethany and Lindsey Neville, Outraged Hearts is a powerful, immersive evening featuring two early Tennessee Williams’ one-act plays. Get ready to be captivated by Williams’ unique storytelling and unforgettable characters with an unflinching feminist gaze that promises to be a night of raw emotions and powerful performances. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience the magic of Tennessee Williams.
Performance Schedule: Thursday – Friday, March 21 – 22, 7:30 PM; Saturday – Sunday, March 23 – 24, 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM; Tuesday – Friday, March 26 – 29, 7:30 PM; Saturday, March 30, 2:30 PM and 7:30 PM.
Big Couch New Orleans, 1045 Desire Street, $35 adults and $12 for students, or VIP Pass. Tickets at https://outragedhearts.bpt.me/
Saturday, March 23
8:30 PM Doors
10 PM Show
THE LAST BOHEMIA FRINGE FESTIVAL PRESENTS:
THE LAST BOHEMIA SOIREE, INCLUDING A PERFORMANCE OF NIGHTINGALE
A magical evening of music and performance hosted by Tony award winner John Cameron Mitchell in the ballroom of his splendid Bywater home, known as The Temple. Rub elbows with fellow festival goers and a who’s who of NOLA creatives set to a concert by San Francisco sarod master Kenny Annis. Then enjoy a seated performance of Vinsantos‘ Nightingale followed by a talkback moderated by John Cameron Mitchell.
The Temple Ballroom, Preferred Seating $70, general seating $40.
Saturday, March 23
8:30 – 10:00 PM—Walking Tour
FRENCH QUARTER GHOSTS AND LEGENDS TOUR
Join acclaimed local author and storyteller Ariadne Blayde for an immersive twilight walk exploring the dark local history and lore of the historic French Quarter, considered one of the most haunted districts in America. Learn about true crime, yellow fever, pirates, ghosts, and the city’s fascinating colonial history through visits to the Quarter’s most haunted places, including the infamous LaLaurie Mansion, the historic Mississippi riverfront, New Orleans’ oldest and most haunted bar, and more. Feel free to bring a drink!
Other dates include: Thursday, March 21, 5:45 – 7:15 PM; Friday, March 22, 5:45 – 7:15 PM; Sunday, March 24, 5:30 – 7:00 PM
622 Pirates Alley, meet outside Pirates Alley Cafe & Old Absinthe House, next to the Cathedral. $30 or VIP Pass.
