Scene - Blogs - Horton Foote R.I.P.

Horton Foote R.I.P.
Published: 3/5/2009 11:02 AM
Last Modified: 3/5/2009 11:02 AM

This is truly sad news.

Read the story: Horton Foote dies

Foote is best known for his work in film ("Tender Mercies" and his adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird" won Oscars for his writing, while his "A Trip to Bountiful" earned a Best Actress award for Geraldine Page). But he was one of America's foremost playwrights, whose work often centered around his memories of his Texas childhood.

A quick check of the World's archives show that only one of Foote's plays has ever been staged in Tulsa. The Center Stage Players, the theater troupe that was associated with the Center for the Physically Limited, put on "1918," the first play in what would become Foote's nine-play "Orphans' Home Cycle."

That is a shame. It's also a shame that, in spite of years of trying, Teresa Miller of the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers was never able to get Foote to come to Tulsa, either for the center's Celebration of Books or as a special speaker.

Foote was always "too busy," even though he was well into his 80s when Miller made her first attempt to lure Foote to Tulsa. And he was -- his "The Young Man from Atlanta" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995, and this year, one of his plays, a dark comedy about a once-wealthy family called "Dividing the Estate," was revived on Broadway. New plays kept coming, and more and more theaters began reviving his past work.

It is a rich vein of theatrical and literary soil that Foote mined in his long and productive life, and one hopes that it isn't allowed to fade away.

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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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