Live Arts Theater’s 2024/25 VOYAGES Season continues with Horton Foote’s tender and deeply poignant play, THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL. Sponsored by Charles & Janet Cheeseman and Barbara & Jay Kessler, THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL has 16 performances in the Founders Theater. The show runs March 21 through April 12, 2025, at Live Arts Theater, 123 E. Water Street, in Charlottesville. Tickets are $28 for adults, $25 for students and senior citizens, ticket for pay-what-you-can performances are sponsored by Ting and are available through the Box Office at boxoffice@livearts.org, by phone at 434-977-4177 x123, or online at livearts.org/tix.
Live Arts will host two special events for THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL: opening night reception following the performance on Friday, March 21, 2025; and a post-show audience talk-back on Thursday, April 3 (7:30pm curtain). Audiences are welcome to enjoy beverages and concessions one hour prior to the performance and at intermission.
“ … one of the half-dozen greatest American plays … I’ve never been more deeply moved by a theatrical production of any kind.” —The Wall Street Journal
As THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL opens, we see Carrie Watts sitting in a rocking chair, rocking back and forth. She has been cooped up in a two-bedroom Houston apartment for 15 years with her weary middle-aged son and his wife. She longs to get away, to escape the quarrels, and to find peace. Homesick and determined, she sets out on a bus-trip-pilgrimage back to the small town of Bountiful, Texas, a place precious in her memories, one last time.
One of the most celebrated American playwrights of the 20th century, Horton Foote has often been likened to Chekhov for his ability to combine comedy and tragedy in the same moment, to capture the quotidian where nothing seems to happen yet everything happens.
“He has an uncanny way of encapsulating the macro within the micro,” says director Susan E. Evans. “The small town of Harrison, Texas, Foote’s fictional stand-in for his own hometown of Wharton, becomes the everywhere. The characters who populate Foote’s plays are just ordinary people, profound in their simplicity, coping with what Foote called ‘life’s vicissitudes.’”
Live Arts’ production of THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, directed by Susan E. Evans, features an outstanding cast of local theater artists: Betsy Brantley as Mrs. Carrie Watts, Johnny Butcher as Ludie Watts, Caitlin Reinhard as Jessie Mae Watts, Katie Wu as Thelma, Daniel Atwood as the Sheriff/Ticket Agent, and Hillel Finder as Roy/Ticket Agent.
THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL’s skillful creative team includes: Morgan Hall (production stage manager); Katherine Wang (assistant stage manager); Melissa Goldman (scenic designer); Ari Bell (assistant scenic designer); Rachel Pfundstein (lighting designer); Theodore Teichman (sound designer); Amy Goffman (costume designer); Caitlin Miller (assistant costume designer); Lynne Cates (properties designer); Christine Jacobs (dialect coach); and Daniel Kunkel (fight choreographer).
Performance History
THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL premiered on NBC television on March 1, 1953, starring Lillian Gish. Foote’s play subsequently premiered on Broadway in November 1953, also with Gish in the lead role. The play was produced Off-Broadway by the Signature Theatre Company in 2005, with Lois Smith as Carrie Watts and Hallie Foote (the playwright’s daughter) as Jessie Mae Watts; this revival won an Obie Award for Smith and four Lucille Lortel Awards. Foote revised the published script in 2007. In 2013, THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL was revived on Broadway at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre, starring Cicely Tyson. There have been two films of the play: a 1985 film starring Geraldine Page, and a TV film version of the Tony Award-nominated Broadway revival, also starring Cicely Tyson.
About the Playwright
Horton Foote authored more than 60 plays and films; his writing career spanned almost seven decades – amazing longevity for a playwright. He has left a legacy as one of America’s foremost storytellers. At the time of his death aged 92 in 2009, he was still hard at work, putting final touches on adapting his nine-play Orphans’ Home Cycle into a three-part production staged in 2009-2010 by the Hartford Stage Company and the Signature Theater in New York. As a boy, Horton Foote received a “calling” to be an actor. After racking up minor acting credits in New York, he soon turned to playwriting as one way to ensure decent roles for himself. His first play was produced off-Broadway in 1941, and by the late 1940s he started to write for the new medium of television, for the Gabby Hayes show and Playhouse 90. During his long career, Foote was the recipient of numerous awards, including two Oscars, in 1962 for his best screenplay adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” and in 1983 for best original screenplay “Tender Mercies,” the Pulitzer prize in 1995 for The Young Man From Atlanta, and the National Medal of Arts Award in 2000.
About the Director
Susan E. Evans joined Live Arts’ staff as Artistic Director in June 2021. For Live Arts she has directed ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST, LOVE AND INFORMATION, and UNCLE VANYA. She held several positions in the San Francisco Bay Area, as Artistic Director at Eastenders Repertory Company, at the Douglas Morrisson Theatre, and at Town Hall Theatre. Other Bay Area directing credits include Contra Costa Civic Theatre; Actors Reading Writers; and collaborations with solo artist Carolyn Doyle, and playwright Scott Munson. Evans is a proud graduate of the Drama Studio London @ Berkeley and an Associate Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. www.susaneevansdirector.com
About Live Arts
Founded in 1990, Live Arts is celebrating more than 34 years of forging theater and community. Powered by more than 1,000 volunteers, Live Arts is a national model for engaged community theater, known for exceptionally high caliber productions, provocative programming and for supporting new works. Live Arts is guided by these organizational priorities: Artistic Integrity; Educational Excellence; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion; and Volunteer & Community Engagement. As the anchor tenant in a four-story space, Live Arts proudly serves as a vital cultural resource in the heart of downtown Charlottesville with two state-of-the-art stages, rehearsal studio space, a library, and a rooftop event space.
The 2024/25 VOYAGES Season is made possible by:
The generous support of The REA Charitable Trust, C-VILLE Weekly, WTJU 91.1FM, Ting, PJ Networks Computer Services, the City of Charlottesville, Albemarle County, The Madwoman Project, and by hundreds of theater lovers. Live Arts is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which receives support from the Virginia General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
For More Information Please contact Marketing & Communications Manager Madison Patterson by email at madison@livearts.org or phone at 540-447-4563, or visit livearts.org.
