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"The Trip to Bountiful"
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by Horton Foote
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Directed by Bill Schuler
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Oct. 5 - 7, 2006 at 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 8, 2006 at 2:30 p.m.
Oct. 12 - 14, 2006 at 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 15, 2006 at 2:30 p.m.
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Synopsis
This is the poignant story of Mrs. Watts, an aging widow living
with her son and daughter-in-law in a three-room flat in Houston,
Texas. Fearing that her presence may be an imposition on others,
and chafing under the rigid and selfish supervision of her
daughter-in-law, Mrs. Watts imagines that if she can get away
and return to her old home in the town of Bountiful, she is sure
to regain her strength, dignity and peace of mind. So she attempts
to run away, and when she reaches a bus station on the last part
of her short journey, she falls into the hands of a sheriff whom
her son and daughter-in-law have put on her trail. The sheriff, a
kindly fellow, allows her to complete the final stage of her journey,
so she proceeds to Bountiful and makes a lonely pilgrimage to the
scene of her old home. Only too soon she learns that the friends of
her youth have all died or scattered, and her home is no longer the
spacious mansion of her memories but a crumbling wreck. But she has
the supreme satisfaction of plunging her hands into the strength-giving
earth, and this leaves her with a sense of that strength and dignity
that will give her the courage to survive. When her son and
daughter-in-law appear on the scene to take her back to Houston, she
consents to return quietly, secure in the knowledge that the remainder
of her existence will be enriched as a result of her last contact with
Bountiful.
First presented on television and then produced on Broadway.
"THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL…is 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"
-- NY World-Telegram.
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Published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
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