Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate Headed for Broadway

Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate, a critically acclaimed hit last fall at Primary Stages, will play a limited engagement on Broadway this fall produced by Lincoln Center Theater. The production, to be presented at a Shubert theatre to be announced, will begin previews on October 23 and open on November 20, directed by Michael Wilson. The original cast of 13, headed by Elizabeth Ashley and the playwright's daughter Hallie Foote, will reprise their roles on Broadway.

Set in Foote's fictional Harrison, Texas a stand-in for his real-life hometown of Wharton, in 1987, Dividing the Estate tells the often hilarious story of an extended family in conflict over what should be done with its extensive property holdings. Ashley plays the matriarch, with Foote, Penny Fuller and Gerald McRaney as her bickering children. The cast also includes Devon Abner, Arthur French, James DeMarse, Pat Bowie, Virginia Kull, Maggie Lacey, Nicole Lowrance, Jenny Dare Paulin and Keiana Richard.

Dividing the Estate will be the first Foote play presented on Broadway since his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Young Man From Atlanta was produced in 1997. The playwright, who celebrated his 92nd birthday on March 14, has enjoyed a number of well-reviewed off-Broadway productions in recent years, including The Day Emily Married and When They Speak of Rita at Primary Stages, The Trip to Bountiful at Signature Theater, and The Traveling Lady at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Lincoln Center Theater produced his play The Carpetbagger's Children in 2002. As a screenwriter, Foote won Academy Awards for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies.

Ashley won a Tony Award for Take Her, She's Mine and was nominated for Tonys for Barefoot in the Park and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Thirty years after playing Maggie the Cat on Broadway, Ashley played Big Mama at Hartford Stage. Other Broadway credits include Enchanted April, The Best Man, The Skin of Our Teeth, Caesar and Cleopatra, Legend, Hide and Seek and Agnes of God. Ashley has specialized in the works of Tennessee Williams at theaters around the country.

Foote, known as a peerless interpreter of her father's work, has appeared onstage in The Carpetbagger's Children, The Death of Papa, The Day Emily Married, When They Speak of Rita, The Trip to Bountiful, The Last of the Thorntons, Talking Pictures, Night Seasons, Laura Dennis, The Roads to Home and The Widow Claire, among many others. Dividing the Estate will represent her Broadway debut in a play by her dad.

French received a Lucille Lortel Award for the Signature Theater Company's production of Two Trains Running. His Broadway credits include Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The River Niger, The Iceman Cometh, Death of a Salesman, Design for Living, You Can't Take It With You, All God's Chillun Got Wings and Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death.

Fuller appeared in A New Brain and An American Daughter at Lincoln Center Theater and in Southern Comforts at Primary Stages. Her Broadway credits include Barefoot in the Park, Cabaret, Applause and Rex.

McRaney appeared off-Broadway in The Exonerated and is known for the TV series Simon and Simon, Deadwood and Jericho.

Dividing the Estate will have sets by Jeff Cowie, costumes by David C. Woolard, lighting by Rui Rita and original music and sound by John Gromada, the play's original design team.