This multi-city, multi-group festival is exciting - theaters, cinemas, KERA, Arts & Letters Live, the arts magnet high school - all presenting Horton Foote's work. I'm privileged to play a small role in all this, designing The Traveling Lady set for WaterTower Theatre's production. (A big plus is that it is directed by a long time collaborator of Foote's.) A lovely play.
Mr. Foote may be the most famous man nobody's ever heard of.
He wrote 70 plays plus distinguished film scripts (including that jewel To Kill a Mockingbird!) and, oh, you know, a Pulitzer. But he must have been a not-a-back-slapper kind of person... like his plays... gentle, shrewd, well-observed, real-people drama. Not much blood (I think it's wild that WaterTower is following the violent Lieutenant of Inishmore with the subtle Lady). Stuff happens, of course - The Traveling Lady has more or less a prison break and chase, abandonment, theft, breach of trust, all that dramatic stuff - but it's at human scale and characters have recognizable real-human reactions. You think - "I know that lady. I know how she feels."
This is the second of Foote's plays I've gotten to design. I find the effect of his work cumulative... seeping into my own world, helping me see other people a little more kindly - but more accurately. Maybe I'm a little wiser? Maybe we all need more Horton Foote more of the time?
The Traveling Lady - Horton Foote, WaterTower Theatre, Addison TX
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