Foote Family Puts Best Effort Forward

A sense of place resounds through the work of many writers, and for his territory, Horton Foote, the playwright who has been called “the American Chekhov,” long ago staked out the small East Texas burg where he grew up. On a map, that town is identified as Wharton, an hour or so from Houston near the Gulf Coast, but in his plays, Foote has it as Harrison, as much a character as the humans who populate his work.

Daisy Foote, youngest of 84-year-old Horton’s four offspring, grew up during a period when her parents had moved the family to New Boston, N.H., west of Manchester. In her plays, which she began writing almost a half century after her father’s debut, the place is New England--in particular, “Tremont,” N.H.

“When They Speak of Rita,” which opened in May at off-Broadway’s Primary Stages theater, is Daisy Foote’s New York playwriting debut, and it comes as a package: Her famous, Pulitzer Prize-winning father is directing the play and her sister Hallie Foote is Rita, a Tremont wife and mother frustrated by her stifling, small-town existence.

“Stifling” was also appropriate for the premature summer weather that descended during the play’s preview period, but it was pleasantly cool inside Horton Foote’s antique-filled apartment in Manhattan’s West Village, where the family trio had gathered on a recent morning. The courtly, white-haired patriarch wore a dark linen jacket; his daughters, chestnut hair brushing their shoulders, were more casually dressed in T-shirts and khaki trousers.

*

This is the first time they have worked in this configuration, although the Footes are “very involved with each other,” Hallie says. She, at 46, the eldest offspring, has made her reputation playing many of her father’s characters (including one based on her grandmother) on stage and in films, and he has directed her in several productions.

Hallie has produced some of her father’s work (a role originally taken by their mother, who is now deceased). She and Horton Jr. starred in Daisy’s first play, “God’s Pictures,” that premiered in Indianapolis several years ago. (Another brother, Walter, is an attorney who frequently negotiates family business and is an aspiring filmmaker.)

Horton Jr. might also have had a part in “Rita” except for two things: “The only appropriate role would be my husband,” Hallie says, “and that would be too weird.” And, the actor now has a restaurant, the Tavern on Jane Street, that occupies most of his time.

“I think once I finished the play, I knew Hallie would be good in the part,” says Daisy, explaining how things came together. “Then she saw it in workshop and did a reading in New York. I hadn’t thought of Dad directing, but Hallie thought he’d be great. He came to see it, really related to it and said he’d like to do it.”

Primary Stages agreed to take the production as a family project. “I hadn’t directed for years, but I was very moved by it; I can only direct things I’m in sympathy with,” Horton Foote says, adding with a smile, “and I didn’t think my daughter would fire me.”

*

In her father’s plays, Hallie often speaks with a Texas drawl; for Daisy’s, she has adapted the harsher New England accent. Otherwise, she finds similarities. “I think they both write wonderful parts for actors. They’re writing about different places, obviously, but [what I like] is more about qualities like humanity. And the simplicity [of their work] is very deceptive.”

In “Rita,” the story leisurely unfolds to reveal strange turns of events. Rita, the consummate homemaker, sets the town on its ear by running away--and then coming back to face the consequences.

“Some people think she’s selfish,” Hallie says, “but I have a lot of compassion for her, and when I’m playing her, I never feel selfish.” Although she says “I find a little bit of myself in everyone I play,” in one respect it’s impossible this time: Rita seems unable to follow through with her dreams--”Did you ever feel you’re missing something?” she asks plaintively. “My dad,” Hallie says, “has always made me feel I can do anything.”

Their working together “started out in a funny way years ago,” Horton Foote says. “I’ve always had an association with certain actors--[Robert] Duvall and I had that experience.” The actor starred in Foote’s screenplays for “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) and “Tender Mercies” (1983), both of which won Oscars for best screenplay.

In the ‘80s, he was working on his “Orphans’ Home” cycle of plays and feeling lost because actresses such as Kim Stanley and Geraldine Page, whom he would previously have cast in the lead role, “were now too old.” He happened to see Hallie performing in an acting class production, after which “I called my wife and said, ‘I’ve found my Elizabeth.’ ” “Courtship,” part of the cycle and later filmed for PBS, was the first of his plays in which she was cast.

“I don’t think of Hallie when I’m writing, but obviously she has qualities that are very useful to me,” says Horton, who has cast her in “The Last of the Thorntons,” a new play coming in the fall.

“When we work together, there is a sort of shorthand between us that makes it easy, but otherwise I don’t feel like I’m working with my family,” Hallie says.

“We are careful, bend over backward not to show favoritism,” Horton says. But still, “people bring up nepotism.” Would Primary Stages be doing Daisy’s play if her father weren’t Horton Foote?

“Lawyers, doctors work with their children and no one says anything about it,” Daisy says. “Everyone sort of expects it. I’ve never felt I was riding on his coattails because I feel my dad believes in me.”