The Ben May Main Library presents a dramatized version of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory, performed by local theater veterans, E A Keeble and William W. Watts, and Maddox Lugo as the young Truman Capote.
This humorous, touching tale is told by a young man remembering his life as a 7 year old boy in rural Alabama and his experiences with his "best friend," an elderly, eccentric cousin who embraces all of life with childlike wonder.
They are planning, as they do every Christmas season, to make fruitcakes with their hard earned pennies, collecting pecans and buying whiskey from a mysterious American Indian bootlegger named HaHa Jones. What happens that Christmas is both reenactment of the rituals they perform each Christmas and a surprising adventure never to be repeated again.
Admission is free.
For more information, please call 251-208-7097.
William Watts, a local attorney, still remembers his first role as the Hawaiian King Kamehameha in the 6th Grade, and the glory of the handmade paper-mache crown of feathers his mother so finely crafted. The experience set his course for a life on stage in high school, college, and, for the last 30 years, on the community theater stage in Mobile and Baldwin Counties. Favorite roles have included Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (JJP), C S Lewis in Shadowlands (MTG), Stanley in Smoke on the Mountain (MTG), Norman in On Golden Pond (JJP), Salieri in Amadeus (JJP), Malvolio in Twelfth Night (Shakespeare in the Park) and Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (JJP). He was last seen on the JJP stage as Orgon in Tartuffe and recently performed with the Mobile Opera for its production of The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Bill Watts approached E.A. to do “A Christmas Memory” with him for a church gathering a few years ago, and she subsequently agreed with him that this Southern literary gem deserved a wider audience. The last time E.A. Keeble appeared on the Bernheim Hall stage was as 10-year-old Ethel Anne Kern, in a student piano recital, when her proudest accomplishment was a successful curtsey. Born & raised in Mobile, E.A. has won outstanding performance awards at three area community theaters.