By Verna Slate, Williamson County Bureau
MARION — The Marion Cultural and Civic Center has two distinct draws on its upcoming schedule, per thesouthern.com and KFVS12: a performance from blues artist Keb' Mo', and a staged reading of "Steel Magnolias" organized as a fundraiser for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library.
The Civic Center has carried this kind of dual identity for years — one night a touring national act, the next a hometown cast raising money for a literacy program that mails free books to kids across the region. The "Steel Magnolias" reading leans on that second tradition, trading a full staged production for a reading that puts the fundraising, not the scenery, at the center of the evening.
Both events lean on the same civic instinct that's kept the Center relevant since it opened: bring in a name act to fill seats, and use the venue's pull to prop up local causes the rest of the year. For a county that lost its coal-camp theaters and picture shows decades ago, it's one of the few rooms left where that still happens under one roof.
- filed from the courthouse steps, where the ghosts take good notes.
— Compiled from reporting by thesouthern.com and KFVS12.
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