ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704110017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: MICHAEL KUCHWARA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Prolific playwright who was 12 years old when he ``got the call to become an actor'' says writing is the most satisfying of all his pursuits.
Playwright Horton Foote comes from a long line of storytellers - spinners of sweet-tempered, yet often sorrow-tinged tales of ordinary folks who lived in his beloved east Texas.
So it is no surprise ``The Young Man From Atlanta,'' his current Broadway hit and a Pulitzer Prize-winner two years ago, is based on an actual event, filtered, of course, through Foote's imagination.
The drama, set in Houston in 1950, revolves around the drowning of a 37-year-old man, the reaction of his parents and the involvement in all this of the play's mysterious title character.
``There were many speculations about the death, but no one ever really understood what happened: Was it an accident? Was it a suicide? Certainly the parents never did,'' Foote said during a recent interview in his Greenwich Village apartment. ``I think the father evaluated the event as correctly as anybody could, but I don't think he ever talked about it. And the mother totally had a fantasy going about it.''
In ``The Young Man From Atlanta,'' which stars Rip Torn and Shirley Knight as the distraught parents, a lot is left unspoken - something Foote doesn't find so unusual.
``I came from a family of talkers, but I don't know if they told you what they really were thinking about,'' he said. Foote, in a quiet, direct, yet unassuming manner, does.
At 81, the man still has the soft, gentle twang of his Texas roots. Gracious and courtly, he sat on a sofa in a high-ceilinged living room and talked about what made him choose the most precarious of professions - acting - nearly 70 years ago. It was like a religious conversion, he explained.
``I got a call to become an actor - at the age of 12,'' Foote said simply. ``So my parents didn't have much choice.''
Not that he had seen much theater, growing up in Wharton, Texas, some 60 miles southwest of Houston, in a house he still owns today. The writing came later, after Foote had moved to New York in the late 1930s and was working with the American Actors Company, an adventurous troupe that produced original works with American themes.
Foote contributed a few short pieces. Encouraged by people like choreographer Agnes de Mille, he eventually wrote a full-length play called ``Texas Town'' - with a big part for himself.
``I got acting out of my system and never looked back,'' Foote said. He still gets offers to perform - and turns them down - although he did do the voice of Jefferson Davis in Ken Burns' monumental public television series on the Civil War.
Writing, not only for the stage but for television and the movies as well, has proved to be more satisfying. Foote wrote for the so-called ``Golden Age'' of television in the 1950s, turning out plays that were broadcast live on television. He also ventured into movies, winning two best-screenplay Academy Awards, one for his adaptation of Harper Lee's ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' the other for ``Tender Mercies,'' starring Robert Duvall.
Foote is a prolific writer. His many efforts include a nine-play cycle, with the umbrella title of ``The Orphans' Home.'' Its last installment, ``The Death of Papa'' - starring Matthew Broderick - was performed earlier this year in Chapel Hill, N.C., at Playmakers Rep, and it may find its way to New York, too.
``I still write a lot - I'm a compulsive writer, although not on any particular schedule,'' he said. ``Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and start writing, although often those midnight inspirations are terrible.''
``The Young Man From Atlanta'' began life in January 1995 at the Signature Theater Company, a small off-off-Broadway group that celebrates a different playwright each season. Foote was showcased during the 1994-95 season, and ``Young Man'' was its crown jewel.
The Broadway production is different. Recast and with a new director, Robert Falls, the play started at Chicago's Goodman Theater earlier this season before coming to New York in March. The playwright loves the process.
``It's a very complex relationship - director and writer,'' Foote said. ``You had better be sure of each other. And then there are the performers. I love actors, maybe because I was one. I am always at rehearsals. I just don't get this business when actors, directors and writers feel a sense of confrontation. We depend so on each other.''
The playwright constantly is surprised at how his writing germinates.
``I think a great deal before I write,'' he said. ``I make notes from time to time in notebooks because I really never know when something is going to take hold. It's very difficult to tell what grabs you about an idea and then makes you follow through.''
The playwright said he is a fast writer, creating scenes and dialogue in spurts. Yet Foote writes in longhand - ``It's just more personal,'' he said - and usually with a ballpoint pen. His secretary now deciphers his scribblings, a job held by his wife, Lillian, until her death in 1992.
More than just his interpreter is different.
``It's all changed around,'' Foote said. ``I used to not be able to write in Texas because I have a very large family and they never understood what I did. I just listened to them talk and talk. I wrote in New York and then in New Hampshire, where I had a house for many years.
``Now it is just the opposite. Most of my family is gone. It's very quiet in Texas. Those relatives that are there think my occupation is an exotic, strange one. They don't bother me. I now find New York very distracting. There are so many things I want to see and do in this city. The tables have turned.''
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Horton Foote no longer acts, althoughby CNBhe did do the voice of Jefferson Davis in Ken Burns' public
television series on the Civil War.