Tennessee Williams Festival Postponed

This annual Tennessee Williams Festival would have opened this week if not for COVID-19. There was originally talk to postpone the events until later this summer, but now the programming for “Tennessee Williams & Italy” will be moved to May of 2021. The productions will take place at The Grandel.

Executive Director Carrie Houk says, “The scope of the planned productions was too large to be able to produce as we imagined and insuring that our casts, crews and audiences remained safe.”

She says if it’s safe to proceed in October, “Tennessee Williams: Something Wild” will play October 22-November 1, 2020, at The Link Auditorium (formerly The Wednesday Club and the theatre where The Mummers performed). The play focuses on Williams’ youth and time spent with The Mummers, an offbeat St. Louis theatre company that tried out a number of Williams’ early plays and is immortalized in Williams’ essay “Something Wild”. 

Also in the works for later this year- a production of Williams’ most iconic play, “The Glass Menagerie” seen through the lens of The Mummers in a framing story written by Brian Hohlfeld. Other offerings will include a production of “Glass” by Michael Aman, which imagines Tennessee Williams and Laurette Taylor in her dressing room on the opening night of “The Glass Menagerie”; a series of “St. Louis Rooming House Plays”, one-acts by TW that all take place in St Louis ; “The Man in the Overstuffed Chair”, a one-man show featuring renowned TW interpreter Jeremy Lawrence, based on an essay in which Tennessee addresses his relationship with his father; a Scholars Conference which will delve deeply into Williams’ time in Missouri and more.

For more background information on the Festival click here!