Lincoln Center Theater to Host Memorial for Horton Foote

Lincoln Center Theater will host a memorial for Academy Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Horton Foote on May 11 at 4PM at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. The event is open to the public, and doors will open at 3:30PM. Foote, whose most recent play Dividing the Estate was presented on Broadway earlier this season by LCT, died on March 4 at age 92.

Scheduled to appear at the memorial are writers Edward Albee, Daisy Foote and Romulus Linney, actors Devon Abner, Elizabeth Ashley, Matthew Broderick, Robert Duvall, Hallie Foote, Roberta Maxwell, Estelle Parsons, Lois Smith and Harris Yulin, singers Meghan Andrews and Betty Buckley, theater producers Andre Bishop, Casey Childs and James Houghton and director Michael Wilson, as well as Foote’s two sons, Horton Foote, Jr. and Walter Foote.

At age 79, Foote won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta just after Signature Theater Company devoted a season to his work. The next decade brought a flurry of productions in New York—The Traveling Lady, The Day Emily Married, The Carpetbagger’s Children and an acclaimed revival of The Trip to Bountiful starring Lois Smith. As a screenwriter, he won Oscars for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies and was nominated for adapting The Trip to Bountiful for the screen.

At the time of his death, Foote was working to put together “The Orphans’ Home Cycle,” a three-part presentation of his autobiographical plays to be produced jointly by Hartford Stage beginning in August and as the 2009-2010 season at Signature Theatre Company.