Here’s how not to do a festival.
I’m back from the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival.
Carnival season leads right into festival season. So if you don’t go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, you may want to plan a visit to the city in springtime, when the weather is beautiful, and there’s a festival (or 2 or 3) every weekend. Just this past weekend, we had the Tennessee Williams Festival, Congo Square Rhythms Festival, and the Opera Festival (which I also attended). And those are just the three I know about. But I digress.
The Tennessee Williams Festival is a literary event celebrating the playwright and the written word. It’s in its 40th year, and I am in my 4th. With every year, I am becoming a bigger and bigger fan of Tennessee Williams. What a writer!
His plays are staged in various venues throughout the festival. The historic home, BK House, hosted an elegant (and expensive) evening. For one night only, they staged a performance entitled “We Have Not Long To Love.” Isn’t that a great title? I bet Tennessee wrote that.
This event featured scenes from various Tennessee Williams plays, each set and performed in a different room of the house by a cast of talented actors, including Ansel Elgort, Jennifer Nettles, and Tony Award winner Harriet Harris. The star-studded event was directed by Rob Ashford, who has his own Tony, Olivier, and Emmy sitting on the mantle at home.
On opening night, I attended an excellent one-man show about Tennessee Williams’ personal life entitled “Kind Stranger.” This clever play wasn’t written by him, but it was adapted from his autobiography and used only his words.
But once again, my favorite event was the annual Tribute Reading -this year held at the Jazz Museum. The Tribute Reading gathers a panel of actors, authors, and poets to read excerpts from Tennessee Williams’ plays, poems, journals, and letters. It’s a fun, intimate evening that starts with hors d’oeuvres and a no-host bar. The tickets weren’t cheap at $45, so I went hungry and made it a dinner-and-a-show.
But enough about Tennessee Williams. This festival is about so much more. It is four days of programming packed with writing workshops, panel discussions, author readings, author interviews, signings, walking tours, cocktail parties, writing marathons, a book fair…
I came in hot. I cleared my schedule and planned to be here for the entire four days. But I blew it. I burned myself out after the first day. I packed snacks and filled my dance card. But after 3 panels, 1 writer’s workshop, 1 dramatic reading, and a play the previous night, I was wiped out.
The exhaustion was self-inflicted. I slept 11 hours that night -without a hangover! I mean, who drags out of bed after a literary festival? My job as a flight attendant is exhausting. My days off should be spent recovering and recharging, but no. I’ve got some kind of fire under me, as if I’m running out of time. Maybe I am? Maybe I have a sixth sense pushing me to live, live, live.
But this mortal body needs some sleep, sleep, sleep.
Was it worth it? Oh yes. It was inspiring, and here I am blogging again, making travel recommendations, and dishing out unsolicited life advice.
Here’s some: go to next year’s Tennessee Williams Festival, just pace yourself better than I did. It’s really a wonderful weekend, and something you can do on your own. Because I know many of us don’t have travel buddies, and those who do may have buddies with divergent interests. If a literary festival sounds fun to you, don’t be intimidated to do this one alone. I do it alone every year, and every year, I meet a lot of nice single ladies there.
And don’t just take this blogger’s advice. In July 2025, National Geographic named the Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans one of the “7 Best Book Festivals Around the World.” The world!
See you in 2027?
