Dallas Theater Center Announces Horton Foote Festival 3/14-5/1

Dallas Theater Center is bringing together Dallas-Fort Worth arts organizations and cultural institutions to produce the metroplex-wide Foote Festival (www.footefestival.com) March 14 - May 1, 2011, to celebrate the life and work of the late award-winning Texas playwright Horton Foote (March 14, 1916 - March 4, 2009).

"Horton Foote is widely considered to be one of the most influential American Playwrights, and the most influential Texas playwright. When he died last year, theater artists and scholars across the nation began to reexamine and celebrate his immense body of work," says Kevin Moriarty, Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater Center. "It would be impossible for Dallas Theater Center to produce a comprehensive look at the significant contributions Horton Foote made to American theater, film and television throughout much of the 20th century, but by bringing together Dallas and Fort Worth's leading theater companies and arts organization in an unprecedented community-wide collaboration, we can celebrate his legacy and introduce audiences throughout the Metroplex to his unique voice."

Dallas Theater Center is organizing the festival, and current participants include: Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, Circle Theater, Contemporary Theatre of Dallas, Dallas Film Society, Dallas Museum of Art's Arts & Letters Live, Dallas Theater Center, Kitchen Dog Theater, Stage West, Southern Methodist University DeGolyer Library, Theatre Three, Uptown Players, WaterTower Theater, and WingSpan Theatre Company and 1:30 Productions, with more participants expected to join the festival in the future.

Foote, born in Wharton, Texas, was a prolific playwright whose plays, among the 60-plus he wrote, included Dividing the Estate, The Trip to Bountiful, the three-part Orphans' Home Cycle, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Young Man from Atlanta. His work has been nominated for numerous awards, including Emmy Awards, Tony Awards and Writers Guild of America Awards. Foote's Academy Award-winning screenplay adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is perhaps his most well-known recognition.

Individual organizations will make known full details of their participation in next year's Foote Festival as they announce their seasons and programming for 2011. Information about the Foote Festival as it develops can be found at www.footefestival.com.

KERA and Art&Seek are the media sponsors for the 2011 Foote Festival.

ABOUT FOOTE FESTIVAL

Foote Festival is an unprecedented community-wide collaboration of Dallas-Fort Worth theaters, arts organizations and academic institutions scheduled for March 14 - May 1, 2011, to honor and celebrate the life and work of award-winning Texas playwright Horton Foote. For more information, visit www.footefestival.com.

ABOUT DALLAS THEATER CENTER

One of the leading regional theaters in the country, Dallas Theater Center (DTC) produces new, contemporary and classic plays and musicals to an audience of more than 90,000 North Texas residents annually. DTC is a resident company of the AT&T Performing Arts Center and presents its mainstage season at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre. DTC engages, entertains and inspires a diverse community by creating experiences that stimulate new ways of thinking and living by consistently producing plays, educational programs and other initiatives that are of the highest quality and reach the broadest possible constituency.

DTC gratefully acknowledges the support of our season sponsors: American Airlines, The Dallas Morning News, Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs, National Endowment for the Arts, TACA, TCA and WFAA.

To post a comment, you must register and login.