A young Broadway producer will save $70,000 tomorrow night by opening a Tennessee Williams play and an opera in New Orleans. With the help of Tulane University, 29-year-old James S. Elliott will present the world premiere of Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an opera by Italian composer Raffaello De Banfield. The opera, written in English, is based on another play of Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letter." Usually a Broadway producer who wants an out-of-town tryout takes the complete show to Boston, Philadelphia or New Haven, Conn. Elliott, however, has taken an incomplete show to New Orleans and completed it with the city's theatrical talents. The producer picked New Orleans because Williams calls it home, the city's French quarter holds the action of "Lord Byron's Love Letter," and the scene of "27 Wagons of Cotton" is nearby Mississippi. Elliott's plans excited Tulane's drama department into offering free services and his own Broadway cast into approving salary cuts...

Fresh New Orleans talent tonight, will help Tennessee Williams roll his aging "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" towards Broadway. The one-act play, published ten years ago, will join an opera by young Italian composer Raffaello de Banfield in a double world premiere here. Written in English, the opera is based on another early play of Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letter." Unlike most professional shows, this one wants to grab more than applause and money from the city that starts its pre-Broadway tour. "We want these shows, despite the talent we bring in, to represent a community effort," says James S. Elliott of New York, the premiere's 29-year-old producer. Under an arrangement with Tulane University, Elliott has sliced expenses for the two-week run. Tulane and its Newcomb College for women will hand him without charge, theater, set designer, choreographers, musical director, lighting, costumes and stage crew. In exchange, Elliott promised to set up a Tennessee Williams writing scholarship at Tulane from the proceeds...

A play and an opera mixed in a world premiere Monday night to produce an odd but exciting evening with Tennessee Williams. With the help of New Orleans talent, a Broadway cast presented Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an opera by Raffaello de Banfield was based on another short play by Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letters." In their different ways, the play and opera have similar stories to tell. Both are concerned with people who hold to the past. In "27 Wagons Full of Cotton," a small cotton gin owner in the Delta area of Northeast Mississippi tried to keep his place by burning down the Syndicate Plantation's big gin. The action of "Lord Byron's Love Letters," is the New Orleans French Quarter of the late 19th Century. An old woman lived in the memory of her love affair with Lord Byron, when she was 16. Moods of the works, however, are not the same. The play is coarse and comic, while the opera has poetic sweetness...

Staged at New Orleans - Brilliant acting by Maureen Stapleton and the music of a young Italian last night put life into two aging plays of Tennessee Williams. The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright watched his "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an English opera by 32-year-old Rafaello de Banfield in a world premiere here. The opera, "Lord Byron's Love Letter," is based on the Williams play. Both plays were published 10 years ago. The moods of the two works do not blend. "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" is coarse and comic, while the opera is poetic and almost fragile. But both are good theater, and there is no difficulty in enjoying their separate emotions. Miss Stapleton is exciting as the soft, giggling wife a Mississippi cotton gin owner unknowingly trades for burning down a big plantation gin. She moves deftly between scenes of pain and laughter...

Mardi Gras revelers danced against a soggy background Tuesday, changing a few routines but none of the fun. If anyone appeared as Lady Godiva galloping through the French quarter, she did so well hidden by a raincoat. Masqueraders strolled through the streets as clowns with umbrellas, Indians with rain hats, knights with raincoats and tramps with ponchos. Light rain, however, did not keep thousands from jamming the parade route to catch favors from the 20 floats of Rex, lord of misrule and king of carnival, Since Washington's birthday and Mardi Gras fell on the same day the theme of Rex was the life of Washington. At night, another krewe, Comus, paraded its 17 floats describing Latin America and then joined Rex after a ball to close the carnival season. Since the 12th night after Christmas, private New Orleans social organizations called krewes have presented balls and parades. Midnight Tuesday night ended festivities and ushered in the lenten season...

Twenty years ago, the late Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss), powered by two ideas, stepped into Congress. He had decided to resettle Negroes and save cotton. His first plan, to ship American Negroes to Africa, grabbed headlines all over the nation and made Bilbo the symbol of white supremacy in the South. The symbol grew so large it overshadowed the soundness of his second idea. But out of the plan to save cotton grew four regional research laboratories. These scientific centers now save American farmers, especially those of the South, millions of dollars each year...

Mary Smith, a new student nurse, dreamed of the day she would minister tenderly among clean, white beds. In her excited young mind, she could see herself bending over a coughing little boy, her gentle hand pushing back the dampened hair from his forehead. Three years later, in the crisp uniform of a registered nurse, she entered a big city hospital. Now she had her clean white beds and the coughing boy. But when the boy coughed, it was an aide who bent over him. Mary had to scribble on charts, mix medications, prepare hypodermic needles, supervise student nurses. She had no time for nursing in the old sense. What's more, a group of Tulane University researchers have concluded, that's the way Mary wants things to be, even though she may neither realize nor admit this fact...