We accept PayPal, Visa & Mastercard
through our secure checkout.
|
The Trip to Bountiful
The Trip to Bountiful
|
Author: Horton Foote Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 65 Pub. Date: 1984 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0822211742 ISBN-13: 9780822211747 Cast Size: 3 female, 6 male, extras
|
About
the Play:
The Trip to Bountiful is a full-length drama by Horton
Foote. An aging widow leaves her son and daughter in a small
Houston apartment to visit the home where she grew up. There in
Bountiful, Texas, she hopes to regain her dignity and peace of mind.
But what will she find there? Especially recommended for school and
contest use.
The Trip to Bountiful tells the story of Carrie Watts, an
elderly woman, who longs to escape the cramped apartment in 1953
Houston where she lives with her protective son, Ludie, and her
authoritarian daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae. Hymn-singing Carrie and
movie-magazine-reading Jessie Mae are oil and water, with poor Ludie
stuck refereeing. Carrie, who has a failing ticker, longs to return
to her beloved hometown of Bountiful, Texas, one final time before
she dies. Dutiful son Ludie, having lost two years and a good job to
an unspecified illness, is trying to make up ground in a new position
that doesn't yet pay all his bills; he's ashamed that he has to rely
on his mother's pension check to make ends meet. Carrie has run away
before but never succeeded in leaving Houston. This time, however,
armed with that check, Carrie escapes to the bus station and
befriends a young woman named Thelma. The new friends travel toward
Bountiful together, but when Carrie arrives in nearby Harrison,
Texas, she begins to learn that her beloved town isn't the same as
she remembered it. The Trip to Bountiful is a masterpiece
about memory, mortality and the undeniable, universal yearning for
home.
The Trip to Bountiful premiered in 1953 on the Philco
Television Playhouse broadcast on NBC-TV, before being produced on
the Broadway stage later that year at Henry Miller's Theatre (now the
Stephen Sondheim Theatre). The
show enjoyed two
Broadway revivals
and has become a popular choice for school and community theatre
productions.
Cast: 3 female, 6 male, extras
What people say:
"If there's any such thing as
a bulletproof play, The Trip to Bountiful may be it. Horton
Foote's elegiac study in the diminution of old age ... is
a sure-fire crowd pleaser." — Los Angeles Times
"The Trip to Bountiful
is about the myth of an idea called home. Mr. Foote creates
characters, nearly all of whom come from the same stretch of
provincial Texas, who long to believe in the reality of real estate,
that a house is a fortress and an anchor in a world of threatening
flux. But this bleakly sentimental playwright is as merciless as he
is compassionate. Home is only an illusion for his people, and
everyone is ultimately an orphan, even when surrounded by family."
— The New York Times
"I've never been more deeply
moved by a theatrical production of any kind." — Wall
Street Journal
"…the rarest of theater
experiences, an evening which will prove an indelible memory…
Horton Foote has done, and done beautifully, the
one thing it is important for a playwright to do. That is, provide
the disciplined material for expert actors to completely capture an
audience and hold it through the evening." — New
York World-Telegram
"The Trip to
Bountiful is a not-to-be-missed treasure." —
BackStage
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.
|
|
|
|