About the Play:

The Traveling Lady is a full-length drama by Horton Foote. It follows a young woman and her journey to a small Texas town where her husband will soon be released from prison. After waiting patiently for the past six years to see a husband she barely knows, this journey will force her to come to terms with her own expectations of love and loyalty. This touching play is widely considered to be an American classic that helped to launch a Pulitzer Prize-winning career.

The Traveling Lady is set in a small town in Texas. Georgette Thomas and her small daughter arrive, looking for Georgette's husband who, she believes, has just been released from the penitentiary. As she later learns, he has in fact been free for some time. During the six years of his imprisonment, Georgette had worked and saved to obtain the money to help her husband get out of prison, and now she is here to join him. Slim, who had an unhappy marriage, becomes very fond of Georgette and the little girl, and feels considerable concern over their plight. When Georgette's husband finally appears, he deserts his wife and child again almost immediately; he robs his present employer, who had befriended him, and makes a calculated attempt to leave town. As he is captured, Georgette realizes that she can never look to her husband for the love and support she had hoped for, and at the end she knows she will turn to Slim, who already loves her

The Traveling Lady premiered in 1954 at the Playhouse Theatre on Broadway in New York. It was produced on television two years later and then became the movie Baby, the Rain Must Fall.

Cast: 6 female, 4 male

What people say:

"…the major characters are admirable people with…depth of feeling and understanding…there are some very genuine and poignant scenes." — The New York Times

"…the author has a fine hand with mood and atmosphere, and he can not only write about everyday people with understanding and sympathy but knows how to set them down in a community that comes completely to life." — New York Post

About the Playwright:

Horton Foote (1916-2009) was a prolific American playwright and screenwriter with an ear for the resilient spirit of daily life in the small-town southern US states. Known as a writer's writer, he switched readily from the stage to television and film. He received Academy Awards for his screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies. During the Golden Age of television, he authored numerous notable live television dramas. For his 1997 television adaptation of William Faulkner's "Old Man," he won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing of a Miniseries. He received the 1995 Pulitzer Prize and his first Tony nomination for his play, The Young Man From Atlanta.