Theatre Three's production of Foote's "Talking Pictures." Wendy Welch is second from left.

  

The plays of Horton Foote have been popular in these parts for a long time, and his death on Wednesday (at age 92) will undoubtedly stir up more revivals of his work. (We can't wait to find out who will have the rights to the area premiere of his recent Broadway critical hit, Dividing the Estate.)

We asked a few folks to share their memories of the man and his work, and here's what we have received so far. We'll keep updating this as we get more (send yours to marklowry@theaterjones.com).

You can read the New York Times obit of Foote here.

►Steven Walters, playwright and actor, now working in L.A.:

During my time at Baylor University, I had the privilege of meeting Horton Foote on several occasions.  Mr. Foote taught several playwriting workshops and gave a series of lectures to the students of the Theatre Department, and I was lucky enough to be able to participate in most of them. Although I was not intimately close with him by any stretch of the imagination, I do remember his lectures having an indelible impact on me, both as a young man and a beginning writer. One story in particular sticks out in my mind. During the question and answer section of one of his lectures, a student asked him about how his faith impacted his career. Mr. Foote responded politely, as he always seemed to do, saying that he preferred to keep his faith a private matter, and that he didn’t feel like a public forum was an appropriate place to discuss it. He did however, as an addendum to that comment, mention that he must’ve had some kind of faith, because he was born in Wharton, Texas, and somehow made it all the way to New York City. That always makes me smile when I think of it.

►Stan Denman, Chairman, Baylor Department of Theatre and Co-Founder of the American Actors Company, named in honor of the original American Actors Company begun by Horton Foote, Agnes DeMille, Jean Stapleton and others in 1938. The AAC's production of Craig Wright's The Unseen is opening March 8 off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre and will be dedicated to Foote's memory.

Horton Foote was truly a gentle giant of the American theatre. Though his long career and the quality of his work made him one of the most respected men of the stage, he never ceased to be the kindest soul in the business. He was always respectful, always encouraging, always pleasant and unflinchingly honest. We found upon starting the Horton Foote American Playwrights Festival at Baylor University that he was also universally loved. He was very loyal to the people he had worked with in the past and they were very loyal in return. Actors, directors, fellow playwrights and friends all clamored to help honor their friend and colleague. He had a long and fruitful career, but he will be deeply missed.

►Terry Martin, artistic director, WaterTower Theatre:

Seeing the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird at the local Drive-In Theatre is literally my first film memory. Mr. Foote's voice has always seemed to be a presence in my life. The Trip to Bountiful (likely his most famous play), Valentine's Day and 1918 are just a few examples of why I think Horton Foote is the American Chekhov—poetic and lyrical; deceptively simple and amazingly complex. Thank you Mr. Foote for all the wonderful characters and plays you left us.

►Kali Meister, Texas native and playwright, currently writing a thesis play for an MFA at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. She says Foote's play A Young Lady of Property "is a pivotal play in regards to revisions of my thesis."

Horton Foote’s plays and screenplays are as pivotal to the South as the works of Tennessee Williams. He did for the Southern male what Williams did for the Southern woman—he showed his readers the many complexities and facets of the Southern male outside many traditional Southern stereotypes that lack emotion and imagination. His plays set my definition of what a male should look like on the page. Foote was able to capture nuance and subtlety in his characters. As a playwright I use many of his plays to guide me in constructing genuine, honest and believable characters.

►Kevin Moriarty, artistic director, Dallas Theater Center:

Horton Foote was Texas' greatest playwright. His plays were measured, funny and deeply felt. Just a few months ago I had the pleasure of seeing Dividing the Estate on Broadway, sitting in a theater filled with audience members who recognized themselves in the characters on stage; the theater was filled with laughter, a few tears and audible responses of surprise at the plot twists. He will be missed by audiences and artists alike.

►Lee Trull, associate artist, Dallas Theater Center; and company member, Kitchen Dog Theater:

I saw To Kill a Mockingbird at the Fort Worth Film Festival about eight years ago—original 1962 print. This was just after I watched a screening of Tender Mercies on a college campus. I was moved by the way his simple language both hid and revealed deep pockets of hope and sorrow. Later on I began reading his plays. They were a big influence on an adaptation I did of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi. Indeed, the only production of a play of his I’ve ever seen, besides the sad UIL one acts of The Trip to Bountiful, was Blind Date directed by Rene Moreno and starring my dear friend Elise Reynard, who also played the lead in my Magi. Blind Date was simple, funny and hinted at a vast sea of loneliness and potential joy at the edges. His great plays, much like Chekhov's, always achieved that rare emotional mix. Unlike Chekhov though, Mr. Foote seemed to be writing about my neighbors, my friends and my family.

►Rose Pearson, executive director, Circle Theatre:

Circle Theatre did a production of Lily Dale, from Horton's Orphans Home Cycle, in the 1980s. And through that production, I became completely enchanted with his gentle manner of telling stories, that deep down were raw and true. I had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with Horton not long after that production. I brought him Circle's reviews and was amused to see how he was drawn to reading them right away. We theatre folk just can't help ourselves, can we? Last fall, I saw Horton deliver a paper at the University of Texas at Arlington and I was struck by how fragile his body had become and yet how sharp his mind still was. When I shook hands with him, he immediately started telling me about a play Circle might want to produce. I wish I could remember the name but can't...I have two major regrets concerning Horton Foote. One is that the year he was scheduled to come to Circle in tandem with our planned premiere of his last unproduced play from The Orphan's Home Cycle, he won a Pulitzer for Man from Atlanta and was suddenly deluged with interviews and appearances and we lost the opportunity. Second regret: Horton Foote just happened to stop by the theatre one afternoon to visit and no one called to tell me! Oh, yes, there is one more regret. The world has lost an irreplaceable talent and most folks today, even in the theatre, have no idea who he was. But Horton Foote was definitely a part of all our lives through books, stage, TV and film. He was a gentleman and a gentle man who had so much to say.

►Allison Tolman, co-founder, Second Thought Theatre

I was a senior at Baylor during the first Horton Foote American Playwright's Festival in 2004. On Mr. Foote's first day there Stan [Denman] asked me to bring my 35 millimeter and take some pictures of Horton and the statuette they had designed for the occasion. Nervous and skittery, I opted out of trying to ask this legendary man to pose for me, and instead just sat with him cradling the weather vane statuette casually in our beautiful, empty Jones Theater and snapped away while he watched a rehearsal for some staged reading or another. He never looked at me, it was as if I wasn't there. It was only him, and the stage, and the play.

►Harry Parker, chair, Department of Theatre, Texas Christian University

What I have always loved about Horton Foote’s writing was its gentleness, and its quiet truth. Many plays are bombastic, and feel as if they must shout at you to get your attention. Most of Foote’s finest achievements are, by contrast, quiet, gentle, thoughtful, even meek. This tone, too, can be used to create great theatre when handled by a master like Foote. His plays are not undramatic by any means, but they celebrate the quiet ordinariness of most of our days, and they are filled with true and honest people that all of us know, or often would like to know. When I remember Horton Foote, I will usually first remember the late, great Geraldine Page singing  the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” in the film of The Trip to Bountiful.  Texas has lost one of its truest theatre treasures, but his work will live on and on.

►Wendy Welch, Dallas actress/singer and adjunct theater faculty, Richland College

About nine years ago, the second year Laura Bush hosted her Texas Writer's Festival on the grounds of the State Capitol in Austin, my husband, Willy was invited to attend as a Texas author. His third children's book had just been published at the time. The keynote speaker and honorary guest of the weekend was Horton Foote, and he addressed a Senate Chamber packed with writers and readers.

The next morning the authors and their guests were invited to the Governor's Mansion for brunch. I found Mr. Foote seated in the parlor across from Mary Higgins Clark. He was a lovely white-haired gentleman in a black suit, looking almost young and demure in demeanor. I introduced myself and told him that my cousin is Ed Johnston, who was the casting director for The Trip to Bountiful. He perked right up, asked all about Ed, my aunt, the family, as though we were old friends. I sat on the floor at his feet so he wouldn't have to strain his neck to look up at me. We chatted for about half an hour or more, his clear eyes never wandering from mine, when his daughter, Hallie walked up and joined in the conversation. It felt so comfortable and down home Texas-y.

They were like long lost friends, or family reunited, void of fame or ego. I have a photo of us somewhere and will now find it and put it on my desk. He also found out my son was an actor (at the time) and he not only autographed, but wrote paragraphs to Grady in two of his play collections, encouraging him to stay true to his passion and art on his life's journey, and recounting his own artistic journey as a young man in Texas.

A couple of years ago I was fortunate to get to play Mrs. Jackson in Talking Pictures at Theatre Three. I felt a kinship with her, and the other characters, having spent a sweet sunny brunch with their creator.

►Jac Alder, Executive Producer-Director, Theatre Three

Almost casually—and certainly with the gentleness and gentility of his normal speech—Mr. Foote once confided a difficulty he'd made for himself in writing a confrontation in a film script. I don't know which screenplay this was, but the difficulty he posited was that his plot brought the two chief characters together for a confrontation in an airport lounge. It was with considerable difficulty, he told us, that he reworked the plot so this confrontation could occur in "the right setting", the woman's flower garden as she pruned and planted. That ability to reach deep levels of intimacy using all the elements of story and to stay so in tune with his characters makes each work a genuine masterpiece with particular rewards for actors with a gift for truth-telling. It gives me hope that younger playwrights want learn from him. It's a long wait between plays of such quality.

►Rene Moreno, Dallas-based director and actor. He is directing The Trip to Bountiful for Contemporary Theatre of Dallas in the Fall of 2009.

Several years ago, I read a short story for [the Dallas Museum of Art's] "Arts and Letters Live" on the same bill as [Horton's daughter] Hallie Foote. We went to Houston to perform the readings at the Alley Theatre, and Hallie told us her father had come up from Wharton and would be in the audience. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my all-time favorite films. I cannot sit through a screening of it without emotion whenever I hear the words: "Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your father's passing." Needless to say I was extremely nervous and very excited to meet him. We were introduced and spoke briefly. He was a soft-spoken man, but I remember his kind eyes looked right into mine and his slight drawl put me at ease. He asked about the story I had read; I told him what a fan I was of his work (I was a gushing fool), and how nice it was to meet and work with Hallie. That was all; a few sentences and then it was over.

A couple of years later in New York, I went to the Signature Theatre to see a revival of his play, Young Man From Atlanta, which Hallie was performing in. As I waited in the lobby for the house to open, a cab pulled up and out jumped Mr. Foote. I was sure he wouldn't remember me, so I kept my distance. To my surprise, he saw and walked right up to me and before I could say anything he shook my hand and said "How nice to see you again. You're the young man that read with my daughter in Houston. Have you come to see the play? How nice to have you. I hope you enjoy it. Hallie will be happy to know you've come." We chatted for a moment longer and then he excused himself and went backstage. Two words describe him in that moment to me: gracious and graceful. He welcomed me to his play as if I had been a long lost cousin invited to his home for sunday dinner. I won't forget that kind gesture as long as i live. He was a great artist and a gentleman. So I say: "Stand up, everybody! Mr. Horton Foote is passing."