Horton Foote Comes West

A part-time resident of Pacific Palisades, the beloved dramatist is enjoying a revival of his soulful play “The Roads to Home” in L.A.

In much of his work, Horton Foote, the acclaimed playwright, captures the essence of small-town life while exploring the elusive meaning of home. Yet there’s nothing indefinable about the source of his inspiration: his own home town of Wharton, Texas (fictionalized as Harrison, Texas), is the setting for most of the more than 60 plays he’s written. To be sure, Foote, still writing and active in the theater at 90, has national-treasure status. He received Academy Awards for his screenplay adaptation of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and his original screenplay ‘Tender Mercies’ (Robert Duvall won best actor for that 1983 film). ‘The Trip to Bountiful,’ originally written for television in 1953, is an enduring theater classic. The film version, produced by Foote in 1985, starred Geraldine Page in a role that earned her the Academy Award for best actress. In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘The Young Man from Atlanta,’ and in 2000, President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts. Despite Foote’s many accolades and far-reaching fame, his roots in Wharton, a small town 50 miles southeast of Houston and 40 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, are never far from his mind. ‘I still have a house there that I go back to quite often,’ Foote said during a recent phone interview from the Palisades home of his daughter, the actress Hallie Foote, and her husband, actor Devon Abner, where he lives part-time. ‘In some ways, I’ve never left it,’ he continued, adding, ‘I have a theory that writers don’t choose what to write about; the subject chooses them.’ His subject–the ordinary men and women he remembers from his youth in Texas–is seemingly endless as a dramatic source. ‘I don’t base my characters on any particular person,’ Foote explains. ‘I take a little piece here and a little piece there and create a new person.’ What results are quiet, often heartbreaking tales of troubled lives, told with compassion and deceptive simplicity. Such is the case with ‘The Roads to Home,’ now playing at the Lost Studio Theatre, where infidelity, divorce and madness are themes woven into a trilogy of related one-acts. ‘One thing people don’t often consider about Horton is that he has reached the very peak of success in his career without ever using a vulgar word,’ says Scott Paulin, ‘Roads to Home’ director. ‘That these plays, all written about a small town in Texas, continue to have such impact on people is a testament to the underlying power of what he’s saying.’ At the heart of the story is the tragic figure of Annie Gayle Long (played by Jenny Dare Paulin), a young housewife and mother living in Houston, Texas, in the 1920s who steadily slips into madness in act one, ‘A Nightingale.’ Unsettled by the murder of her father and her inability to cope with two young children, she rides the streetcars day and night, arriving unannounced at the screen door of Mabel Votaugh (Wendy Phillips), who came from the same hometown as Annie: Harrison, Texas. Comic relief arrives in the second act, ‘The Best of Friends,’ when Mabel’s neighbor Vonnie (Laura Richardson), bursts into Mabel’s living room distraught about the discovery that her husband is having an affair. Mabel’s husband, Jack (Jim Haynie), can’t keep his eyes open long enough to contribute to the conversation. The final act, ‘Spring Dance,’ finds Annie, still radiant and glowing despite her diminished mental state, surrounded by three male friends in a genteel garden setting at what appears to be an ordinary dance. The grimness of her situation slowly unravels in this stirring final scene. ‘In some ways, all of my plays are about the roads to home,’ says Foote, who enthusiastically endorses the current production. ‘Home is a very ephemeral, personal thing and each of us has our own definition. Some people think of it only as a place to escape from. When I left home, I never left mentally, only physically.’ That journey began when Foote left Texas at 16 to study acting. He first studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in California before moving to New York, where he quickly learned the easiest way to get good roles was to write the plays himself. Among the odd jobs he had as a young man in New York was running an elevator on Park Avenue from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., allowing him the time and quiet space to begin writing. ‘I figured the tenants were all in bed by 11 p.m.,’ he says with a chuckle. Critics liked his first play, a one-act, and Foote promptly sent a copy to his proud parents back in Texas. ‘Some of the people in Wharton whose names I used weren’t happy,’ Foote recalls. ‘I learned a lesson. That’s when I decided to take another name for the town.’ His talent for theater led to writing for television’s ‘Playhouse 90,’ ‘Philco Playhouse’ and ‘U.S. Steel Hour.’ Eventually, his career expanded to Hollywood and screenplays. Foote has four children, two sons and two daughters. His wife, Lillian, died in 1992 after 47 years of marriage. Regarding a recent revival of ‘The Trip to Bountiful’ at the Signature Theatre in New York that garnered exceptional reviews, Foote says with characteristic modesty and understatement: ‘That play just seems to reach people.’ Actress Lois Smith played the lead as the homesick Mrs. Carrie Watts, with Hallie Foote in the role of Jessie May, the heartless and demanding daughter-in-law. ‘Critics often say she’s the best interpreter of my work,’ Foote says of his daughter. ‘We’re real collaborators,’ says Hallie of her sometimes director. ‘It’s a joy to work with my father; we have our own special shorthand.’ And what’s next from Horton Foote? ‘I’m writing a play, and this one is not in Harrison,’ he says with a note of playful glee. Co-produced by Hallie Foote and Lea Endres, ‘The Roads to Home’ continues at the Lost Studio Theatre, 130 S. La Brea Ave. (south of Beverly Blvd.) this Friday and Saturday, December 15 and 16 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, December 17 at 4 p.m. The show will also run during the weekends of January 5, 6, and 7 and 12, 13 and 14. Tickets are $15 for all performances. For ticket reservations, call 600-3682 or visit www.theroadstohome.com.