Tennessee Williams Literary Festival
March 25-29, 2009

If this year’s Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival had a theme it might be “Broadway Comes to the Quarter.” That would set the stage – literally – for three Tony Award-winning leading ladies who will be making their appearance here this year.

Festival organizers are billing the three legendary actresses, Zoe Caldwell, Marian Seldes and Frances Sternhagen, as “The Tony Trio,” a well-deserved accolade in keeping with the festival’s mission to keep the spirit of Tennessee Williams alive. Other noted thespians and literary luminaries will also do their part during the 23rd staging of the event at various locations throughout the French Quarter between March 25 and 29.

The five-day fête, which celebrates the life and legacy of Williams in the adopted city he called his “spiritual home,” offers

• two days of Master Classes
• a roster of lively discussions among blue-chip panelists
• celebrity interviews
• theater, food and music programs
• a scholars' conference
• short-fiction and one-act play competitions
• a breakfast book club
• French Quarter literary walking tours
• a book fair
• parties and other special events.

Plus the always-memorable closing to the festivities and one of its most popular and widely publicized events – the “Stella!” shouting contest in which men in undershirts attempt to duplicate Marlon Brando’s famous plaintive cry up to the balcony in the movie version of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“The Tony Trio” and Published Authors

Headlining the list of illustrious participants, Caldwell, Seldes and Sternhagen will dazzle audiences with readings of passages from Williams’ works at a Festival fundraiser on Wednesday, March 25. The following night, at the Festival’s opening night gala entitled “Remembering Tennessee,” the grandes dames will provide musings of their extraordinary careers on the stage and screen. Collectively, the three women have amassed 16 Tony nominations and seven awards.

Other renowned participants in this year’s TennFest include:

• Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford (also the judge of the Festival’s first short-fiction contest)
• Rick Bragg, another Pulitzer winner
• Tony Award-winning playwright John Guare
• acclaimed poet and memoirist Mark Doty
• best-selling author Nevada Barr (Anna Pigeon mystery series)
• best-selling author John Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)
• John Biguenet (also a Pulitzer-nominated playwright for his Hurricane Katrina-themed play, Rising Water)
• Jill Conner Browne (The Sweet Potato Queens series)
• Laura Lippman (Tess Monaghan mystery series)
• Tom Piazza (City of Refuge; Why New Orleans Matters)
• David Simon, author and television crime drama mastermind (Homicide: Life on the Streets; The Wire)
• producer/playwright Eric Overmyer (St. Elsewhere; Law & Order; The Wire)
• former New York Times Magazine deputy editor Katherine Bouton

In addition, there will be readings from other plays, including several that are getting their first public exposure.

Locally Produced Works Featured

New Orleans’ Cripple Creek Theatre Company will stage Kingdom of Earth, a rarely seen Williams play. Ignatius on Stage, adapted from John Kennedy Toole’s iconic novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, remains a Festival staple with a Sunday matinee.

In a nod to budding thespians, theater students from the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA) will perform a series of short works by various playwrights. The 2009 winner of the Festival’s One-Act Play Competition will receive a staged reading and the 2008 winner, Indifferent Blue by George Pate, a full production by students of The University of New Orleans, which administers the contest.

The public is invited to get into the act at the Festival’s second annual Tennessee’s Got Talent!, a competition with celebrity judges voting on contestants’ interpretations of scenes from Williams’ work.

For a complete listing of TennFest events, offerings, culinary events, discounted accommodations and other information, log on to www.tennesseewilliams.net or call 1-800-990-3378 (FEST). The full press release is available at www.tennesseewilliams.net.