What Is the Story of The Orphans’ Home Cycle: The Story of a Childhood?
The Story of a Childhood is the first part in a trilogy of nine plays centering on Horace Robedaux, a character based on the father of playwright Horton Foote. Set in and around a small Texas town, the show consists of three plays, each an hour long: Roots in a Parched Ground (set in 1902) tells of the death of Horace’s father from alcoholism when the boy is 12 years old; Convicts (set in 1904) centers on a farm where 14-year-old Horace is sent to work alongside prison inmates; and Lily Dale (set in 1910) presents the young adult Horace, reunited with the mother who abandoned him when she remarried and moved to Houston with his younger sister.