Horton Foote Raises Hopes for Seattle Theater
by Brad Warren
One moment at the screening of Horton Foote's film Convicts said it all. The show hadn't started yet, and the air was charged, the crowd of actors and film and theater enthusiasts humming.
Foote himself rose slowly from his seat in the audience. The distinguished old stage and screen writer stepped toward the proscenium, then hesitated in the aisle and stood waiting, as if for a cue. One hand tucked in his jacket pocket, his great round face full of expectancy and something like sorrow, he might have been a character in one of his own plays: still harboring hopes and dreams but, like most of us, knowing better than to count on them to come true.
Nonetheless, there he stood, brave enough to carry on this was fitting. The evening's showing was not only the opening event in a weekend-long tribute to this gentle, heartful writer (The Trip to Bountiful, Tender Mercies, The Roads to Home, the screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird) . It was also the kickoff for a fund-raiser on behalf of the Belltown Theatre Center, an outfit that promises an unusually serious approach to stagecraft and performance in a city where amateurish young theaters grow like weeds.
If BTC succeeds, it will be a welcome influence: a conservatory theater where young actors can master craft and where audiences can see productions that strike deep chords, reveal touching secrets and subtly expand our capacity to love. founder Larry Silverberg is a former partner in Freehold, to my knowledge Seattle's only similar establishment, but one chronically (if nobly) beset by poverty. For BTC's board of advisors Silverberg snagged both Foote and another distinguished writer, Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause, Rachel, Rachel).
The film itself was patchy: fine script, strong acting, poor sound, and pacing so slow you might wonder if you were watching a movie or listening to crickets and waiting for the grass to grow. But patchy is part of the price we pay for having hearts.
Like lovers, all new theaters face mean odds. Bonnie Raitt said it well in a sympathetic song about a struggling couple: "If you know how, why don't you say 'em a prayer/They're gonna need all the help they can get."
Here's hoping the theater Foote has joined gets all the help it needs. It might do us all good.
Brad Warren is a playwright and journalist who lives in Seattle.
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Contents on this page were published in the September , 1993 edition of the Washington Free
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