10th Annual Tennessee Williams Festival

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
By Tennessee Williams
Date: August 7-17th, 2025 (Thursday to Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 pm)
Location: The Grandel Theater

STELLA SHOUTING CONTEST
Date: Friday, August 8th at 5:30pm
Location: Courtyard at The Grandel
Description: Always a huge and humorous event, Festival goers will shout Stella’s name. The loudest and most compelling is voted by a jury of random and less than expert volunteers who will declare the winner.

SCHOLAR PANELS
Date: Saturday, August 9th from 9am to 12pm
Location: The Grandel Theatre

9:00am Tennessee in St. Louis/Tennessee in New Orleans
Between 1938 and 1940 Tennessee Williams made a transition from St. Louis to New Orleans. Experts discuss the influence of New Orleans on the work of Tennessee Williams, especially A Streetcar Named Desire.

10:00am Ten Years of Tennessee: A Conversation with Carrie Houk, Tom Mitchell, and Mark Charney
Initiated as an act of love for St. Louis’s great playwright, the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis has a decade of accomplishments. Founder and Executive Artistic Director, Carrie Houk, talks about the festival’s beginnings, challenges, and accomplishments.

11:00am Streetcar Adapted for Opera, Film, and Stage
Tennessee Williams’s great play has inspired adaptations in film, onstage, and in the opera. We will learn about Andre Previn’s operatic adaptation, Novid Parsi’s dramatic retelling within an Iranian immigrant family, and the influence of Streetcar in Pedro Aldomovar’s film, “All About My Mother.”

WALKING TOUR of Tennessee’s Central West End
Date: Sunday, August 10th at 9am
Location: The Link Auditorium
Description: The Williams family first settled in the Central West End and the neighborhood became important to Tennessee’s work. Beginning and ending at The Link Auditorium, this walking tour will visit neighborhood sites that relate to his life and writing. Along the way, we will hear Williams’s own words describing familiar locations. The tour will end with a READING of “God in the Free Ward: A newly published story written in 1934 about Anna Wilkins, hospitalized with a puzzling illness, that reveals Tennessee Williams’s feelings for his sister Rose before her confinement in a mental hospital.

AUSTIN PENDLETON: A LIFE IN THE THEATRE
Date: Sunday, August 10th at 1pm
Location: The Grandel Theater
Description: A conversation with the award-winning actor and director whose work has included productions of Tennessee Williams plays. Austin Pendleton’s long career has been distinguished by performances on stage, film and television in roles that are distinctive and committed. As a director, Pendleton has staged productions on and off Broadway and at major theatres around the country and abroad. He is also an influential acting coach. Among other plays, Austin Pendleton has worked on Tennessee Williams’s Vieux Carre, Night of the Iguana, Camino Real, The Glass Menagerie, and Small Craft Warnings. Carrie Houk, Executive Artistic Director of Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis will host the conversation.

TRIBUTE PERFORMANCE to Tennessee Williams
Date: Sunday, August 10th at 6pm
Location: The Grandel Theater
Description: A special evening of readings, song, dance and music celebrating the work of Tennessee Williams.