The original version of A Season of Dreams was the first original script produced by New Stage Theatre, Jackson, Mississippi, in 1968. The script itself was defined as a "stage presentation": staged recitations and dramatized episodes from the collected works of Eudora Welty. Ellen Gilchrist and Jane Reid-Petty collaborated on that script. At the time, they were also members of the board of directors of New Stage Theatre. The success of the project led to other adaptations of Welty’s works and eventually to the Eudora Welty New Plays Series. A Season of Dreams premiered at the end of New Stage’s third season. The performances ran from May 22 through June 1, 1968. The production was directed by Frank Hains, who also designed the set. Actor Judith Layng composed music for harp and voice, and harpist Betty Rosenbaum arranged and performed the accompaniment and background music. The cast included Kay Fort Child, Virginia Fox Metz, Patrick Kelley, Judith Layng, and Tom Spengler.

Two years later, the script was revised by Ellen Gilchrist and Jane Reid-Petty and adapted for television by Frank Hains as the first original production of the Mississippi Center for Educational Television. Eudora Welty opened the piece with a reading of her short story, "A Memory." The only other cast change from the original stage production was the substitution of Hagan Thompson for Patrick Kelley. The revised show premiered on Thursday, November 19, 1970, at 8:30 p.m., on Channel 29, the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television. It was rebroadcast on Saturday, November 21, 1970, and it remained a popular encore broadcast for many years thereafter. The production also won a Peabody Award.

The 1985 New Stage revival of the show was actually less of a revival and more of a complete reworking of the script. Patti Carr Black and Jane Reid-Petty incorporated excerpts from more recent works by Welty: the novel, Losing Battles, the autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, and a dramatization from the short story, "Why I Live at the P.O." Reid-Petty also directed the revival. Original music for this production was by North Carolina composer Pierce Pettis, including selections for voice, guitar, and harp. The show featured New Stage’s first revolving set that was designed by Sandy McNeal and Jimmy Robertson. The cast included Judith Townsend, Lori Bezahler, David Urrutia, Lydy Becker Caldwell, and Thomas Spengler. The show ran from May 8 through May 25, 1985.

Patti Carr Black was one of the co-founders of New Stage Theatre in 1965; she has served on its board of directors ever since. She was born in Sumner, Mississippi, in 1934. Black attended Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in art and library science in 1955. She married D. Carl Black in 1957 and has one daughter, Elizabeth. Black was divorced in 1968, the same year she earned a master’s degree in art history and library science from Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. From 1968 to 1970, she was a research librarian in New York City, first at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then at Time magazine. While in New York City, she studied graphics and sculpture at the New School for Social Research. Yet most of her working career, beginning in 1957, has been at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson: first as research librarian (1957-1963), then as curator of exhibits at the Mississippi State Historical Museum-Old Capitol Restoration (1970-1976), and finally as the longest-serving director of the museum (1976-1992). She retired from the museum in 1992. She has served on the advisory boards of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Smithsonian National Museum (1984-1987). Other advisory boards on which she has served include the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (1984-1990), the Southern Arts Federation, and the Southeastern Museums Council. Black was a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in 1975. Her other professional memberships include the Mississippi Historical Society, from which she received a merit award in 1980, the American Association of Museums for State and Local History, and the Mississippi Museums Association. She has authored or edited a number of publications, among them: Mules and Mississippi (1978, 1981), Made by Hand: Mississippi Folk Art (1980), Sea, Earth, Sky: The Art of Walter Anderson (1980), Documentary Portrait of Mississippi: The Thirties (1982), Eudora (1984), The Natchez Trace (1986), Approaching the Magic Hour: Memories of Walter Anderson (1989), and Art in Mississippi: 1720-1980 (1998), for which she won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for best nonfiction book. Her latest publication is entitled Of Home and Family: Art in Nineteenth Century Mississippi (1999). Other honors include the 1993 Mississippi Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts/Career in the Arts. Black lives in Jackson.

Jane Reid-Petty was arts editor, theatre critic, and daily columnist for the State Times in Jackson, Mississippi, from 1956 to 1960. The Meridian, Mississippi, native had received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Her theatre training included studies with actor Uta Hagen and acting technique with Bill Hickey at HB Studio in New York. In 1965, she was one of the co-founders of New Stage Theatre, Mississippi’s first and only professional theatre company. She was its managing director until 1970. Through her leadership, New Stage gained membership in the Actors’ Equity Association in 1980. Reid-Petty became producing artistic director of New Stage from 1983 to 1992. She led the organization of the Eudora Welty New Plays Series in 1985, began the corporate funding of individual plays, started an Arts in Education program, began internships for theatre graduates and founded the theatre’s touring program, Shakespeare in the Schools. After her resignation as artistic director in 1992, she continued to act and direct at New Stage. In July of 1997, the New Stage property at 1100 Carlisle Street in Jackson was renamed the Jane Reid-Petty Theatre Center in her honor. After battling lung cancer for several years, Reid-Petty died at her daughter’s home in Jackson on April 16, 1998, at the age of 70.

This collection consists of a photocopy of a thirty-two-page typewritten working script of the New Stage Theatre production of A Season of Dreams that was adapted for the stage from the collected works of Eudora Welty by Patti Carr Black and Jane Reid-Petty. This working copy includes clearly marked selections from the following works by Welty: "Asphodel," "At the Landing," "Lily Daw and the Three Ladies," "A Memory," "The Petrified Man," "A Piece of News," "Some Notes on River Country," "The Wide Net," "Why I Live at the P.O.," Delta Wedding, One Writer’s Beginnings, The Ponder Heart, and The Robber Bridegroom.

1. Script. 1985. 0.10 c.f.