Columbus Tribute For Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

The weeklong Tennessee Williams tribute is held each year in Columbus where the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright was born in 1911. And as MPB's Arts reporter Ron Brown tells us this year's festival attracted a notable Oscar winning actress and fan.

When Brenda Caradine moved to Columbus a few years back to get married, she knew she was coming to the hometown of the late great American playwright Tennessee Williams. But there wasn’t much being done to promote that fact locally. So, Caradine helped begin what has now become an annual event: the Tennessee Williams hometown tribute and festival.

“It’s an honor that we have been entrusted with America’s greatest playwright’s home. And that we now can honor him each year with anywhere from a 9 to a 13 day festival which we have done.”

The festival wrapped up this weekend and is now in its eighth year. Audiences were treated to productions of Williams’ classic plays like “A Streetcar Named Desire,” for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, and 1945’s “The Glass Menagerie”.

The festival also featured a rare performance of a Williams one-act play which had been produced only once before.

“The Dog Enchanted by the Divine Moon was a precursor to The Rose Tattoo and when you see the play, it’s 25 minutes long and then they pull down the screen and you see the movie The Rose Tattoo with Burt Lancaster and Anna Magnani, you say, oh that’s what he was doing, he was working towards something.”

Seeing newly discovered Williams plays are important, says noted Tennessee Williams scholar and author Dr. Kenneth Holditch, because he says Williams is the father of all modern America drama.

“He completely changed the history of 20th century drama with two plays in the 1940’s. And there’s not a good play that’s been written in America since those years that hasn’t been influenced by Tennessee Williams.”

Tennessee Williams wrote strong female leads for the stage, like the Rose Tattoo, performed at the festival by Oscar winning actress Olympia Dukakis.

“This man was an extraordinary spirit. And that spirit is something that really nourishes us again and again and again. It’s something to cherish to be in the room with a play written by a man with such humanity.”

The festival attracts talent like Dukakis because Williams is known the world over as a genius of the theater. Dukakis said her hope in coming to Columbus to perform is that she can help more Mississippi writers and actors follow the lead of a true American master.

“I think particularly for a town like Columbus young people knowing that someone like that came from this town must give them heart that they know that there are no borders, there are no boundaries for them, to pursue what they need to pursue.”

For festival organizer Brenda Caradine, this year’s success is short lived before she begins planning next year’s festival.

“Can we top it? We had Olympia Dukakis. This gracious woman chose to come to Columbus, Mississippi to pay her homage to America’s greatest play write. So by her coming here and people like her, it’s saying to the rest of the world, there must be something in Columbus, Mississippi.”

What awaits in Columbus each and every September is a celebration to the master of the American play, Tennessee Williams. For MPB News, I’m Ron Brown