THEATRE + COMEDY

Deeply funny. Richly drawn. Texas tale.The Alley Theatre presents Dividing the Estate by Horton Foote. Directed by Michael Wilson. Previews start October 7, 2011. Opens October 12, and runs through October 30. On the Hubbard Stage.

Horton Foote, the award-winning writer of The Trip to Bountiful and The Day Emily Married, returns to the town of Harrison, Texas, with this sharp satire about a Southern dynasty in crisis. At odds over the fate of their dwindling inheritance, several generations of the well-to-do Gordon family must confront their disreputable past as they grapple with an uncertain future. Will they face possible ruin and indignity together or take their chances and go their separate ways?

“The theatrical equivalent of a page-turner” - Bloomberg

The work of the late Texas playwright Horton Foote comes back to the Alley where his play The Carpetbagger's Children premiered (Alley 2001). His many plays include The Day Emily Married, The Roads to Home, The Young Man From Atlanta (Alley 1996), The Trip to Bountiful (Alley 2003), Lily Dale, The Widow Claire, Laura Dennis and The Traveling Lady (Alley 1986). His honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Young Man From Atlanta and two Academy Awards for his screenplays for To Kill A Mockingbird and Tender Mercies.

Actress Hallie Foote is perhaps the most highly regarded interpreter of her father’s work. She began her stage career in 1986 in the title role of her father's play The Widow Claire, opposite Matthew Broderick. Father and daughter later collaborated on The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Talking Pictures, Night Seasons, Laura Dennis, When They Speak of Rita, The Last of the Thorntons, The Day Emily Married and The Trip to Bountiful, for which she won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actress, and was nominated for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. She created the role of ‘Sissie’ in the Alley premiere of The Carpetbagger’s Children and returns to the Alley to recreate her Tony-nominated performance as ‘Mary Jo’ in Dividing the Estate.

Ms. Foote said “I'm very excited to be doing Dividing the Estate at the Alley. Having a play produced there was always kind of like going home for my father. Houston is close to Wharton where my father grew up, and was always a very familiar and comforting part of the world to him.”

Dividing the Estate also features Tony-Award winners Elizabeth Ashley as Stella Gordon (Alley's The Glass Menagerie), and Roger Robinson as Doug, making his Alley Theatre debut. Making their Alley Theatre debuts are Pat Bowie as Mildred, James DeMarse as Bob, Ellen Dyer as Irene Ratliff, Penny Fuller as Lucille, Maggie Lacey as Pauline, Nicole Lowrance as Sissie, Jenny Dare Paulin as Emily and Keiana Richard as Cathleen.

Devon Abner returns to the Alley in his role as Son (Alley's The Trip to Bountiful, The Young Man from Atlanta) and Alley Company Artist James Black plays Lewis Gordon (Alley's Pygmalion, Amadeus, August: Osage County).

Director Michael Wilson staged the premiere of Horton Foote's The Carpetbagger's Children at the Alley, and recently the nine play Horton Foote marathon The Orphans’ Home Cycle at the Signature Theatre in New York. He directed the Broadway/Lincoln Center Theatre production of Dividing the Estate, where its many accolades included a Tony nomination for Best Play, the 2008 Outer Critics Circle Award, and Horton Foote's 2008 Obie Award for Playwriting. He returns to the Alley this season to direct Dividing the Estate and the premiere of Ether Dome.

Recommended for mature audiences.