21 GUN SALUTE
21 Gun Salute was inspired by World War II naval exercises in Provincetown Harbor — columns of colored smoke, rocket flares, and gathered boats in the harbor — to celebrate Tennessee Williams life and work, and his stay in Provincetown during the 1940s.
The piece is a live, multi-platform performance – the Boatslip audience on shore, an online radio piece, and emergency and smoke flares set off from Provincetown Harbor during the Tennessee Williams Festival, September 2009. This video is a document of the performance.
Lady Di, the enigmatic and popular host of WOMR 92.1 FM's colorful "Leggs Up and Dancing," hosted the evening's spectacle by greeting guests and offering up historical commentary in her own inimitable way. An accompanying “21 Blender Salute,” complete with frozen kamikazes to toasted the Festival's kickoff – as audience listened to a radio play simulcast on WOMR, which responded to that years Swim For Life theme: The Fight for Life. A similar phrase appears in a play Williams wrote with his friend, Donald Windham: “A new war’s beginning…. The war for life, not against it. The war to create a world that can live without war.”
The custom of the “21 Gun Salute” originated in naval tradition, where a warship would fire its cannons harmlessly out to sea, until all ammunition was spent, to show that it was disarmed, signifying the lack of hostile intent.
The piece is a live, multi-platform performance – the Boatslip audience on shore, an online radio piece, and emergency and smoke flares set off from Provincetown Harbor during the Tennessee Williams Festival, September 2009. This video is a document of the performance.
Lady Di, the enigmatic and popular host of WOMR 92.1 FM's colorful "Leggs Up and Dancing," hosted the evening's spectacle by greeting guests and offering up historical commentary in her own inimitable way. An accompanying “21 Blender Salute,” complete with frozen kamikazes to toasted the Festival's kickoff – as audience listened to a radio play simulcast on WOMR, which responded to that years Swim For Life theme: The Fight for Life. A similar phrase appears in a play Williams wrote with his friend, Donald Windham: “A new war’s beginning…. The war for life, not against it. The war to create a world that can live without war.”
The custom of the “21 Gun Salute” originated in naval tradition, where a warship would fire its cannons harmlessly out to sea, until all ammunition was spent, to show that it was disarmed, signifying the lack of hostile intent.