FitzFest '96
Montgomery, Alabama Sponsored by Huntingdon College, the first F. Scott and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald Festival took place in Montgomery, Alabama, on 28 June-1 July 1996. Modeled loosely on the successful annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in Oxford, Mississippi, FitzFest, as it quickly became known, was designed not as an academic conference, but as a broader celebration, particularly of the Fitzgeralds' ties to Montgomery and the South. Using the Huntingdon campus as a base, FitzFest's organizers recruited support from the Montgomery community, including the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. Participants attended lectures, shared meals, picnics, receptions, and a "Roaring Twenties" costume ball, and toured Fitzgerald sites in Montgomery. The Montgomery Museum presented an exhibition of Zelda Fitzgerald paintings, and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival staged a private reading of A Piece of Paradise , a new play about the Fitzgeralds in Montgomery, by Montgomery author Wayne Greenhaw. A Festival on the Green provided Twenties-era music, a modern dance performance, and an exhibition of automobiles from the Twenties and Thirties. | |
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