FOOTE NOTES at Open Fist Theatre Extends Again thru Feb 23

The Open Fist Theatre Company has announced that its smash-hit, critically-acclaimed production of FOOTE NOTES, written by Horton Foote and directed by Scott Paulin is extending again through Saturday, February 23 at the Open Fist Theatre, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood.

Horton Foote, one of America's greatest storytellers, died in the spring of 2009 at the age of 92. In a career that spanned nearly seventy years he was awarded two Academy Awards for Screenwriting, an Emmy and the Pulitzer Prize among scores of other accolades. Much of his early work was in the form of One Act plays, many of them performed on live television in the early 1950s. A Young Lady of Property first appeared on the Philco Television Playhouse in 1953. The story of Wilma and Arabella, two teenage girls planning to flee their small rural town for the bright lights of Hollywood, is as poignant and provocative today as it was more than half a century ago. In The Land of the Astronauts, set in 1983, local dreamer Phil has vanished, gone off,he says,to become an astronaut leaving his baffled wife and daughter behind. The play tells the story of her sometimes harrowing, sometimes madcap search for her lost love. Both plays take place in Horton's hometown, callEd Harrison in his plays, and both are richly drawn portraits of humans struggling bravely to hold onto their dreams in the face of withering opposition. Another collection of Foote One-Acts, Harrison, TX, just closed a sold out run Off-Broadway in NY under the direction of Pam McKinnon.

Horton Foote (Playwright) has had plays produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway, as well as at many regional theatres. Horton's plays include The Day Emily Married, The Carpetbagger's Children, The Last of the Thorntons, The Young Man From Atlanta, The Chase, The Traveling Lady, The Trip to Bountiful, Night Seasons, Texas Town, Tomorrow, The Habitation of Dragons, The Orphans' Home Cycle, Roots in a Parched Ground, Convicts, Lily Dale, The Widow Claire, Courtship, On Valentine's Day, 1918, Talking Pictures, Laura Dennis, Vernon Early and HARRISON, TEXAS.

In the fall of 2007 the New York premiere of Mr. Foote's play "Dividing the Estate" received universal critical accolades and a sold-out run at Primary Stages. Terry Teachout reviewing the play for The Wall Street Journal states: "Horton Foote, as it happens, is 91 years old...This wonderful play reminds me of something that the great and long-lived Japanese painter Hokusai once said: 'At 90, I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at 100, I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am 110, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive.' I'd say Mr. Foote is a couple of decades ahead of schedule."

He received Academy Awards for his screenplay adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird and his original screenplay Tender Mercies. In 1995, he received the Pulitzer Prize for The Young Man from Atlanta, as well as the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway and the Outer Critics Circle Special Achievement Award for the Signature Series of his plays. He was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame in 1996. In 1998, Horton was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and at the same time received from the Academy the Gold Medal of Drama for his entire body of work. He received the National Medal of Arts Award from President Clinton in 2000. Other awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award for Drama, The New York State Governor's Arts Award and the American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play Award for The Carpetbagger's Children, presented by the American Theatre Critics Association. His memoirs, Farewell and Beginnings, are published by Scribners.

SCOTT PAULIN (Director/Carl) began his career as a stage actor in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s appearing at The Berkeley Repertory Theater, The Magic Theater, The Berkeley Stage, and the Eureka Theater where his performance as Pavlo in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel received the Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Performance. Since coming to Los Angeles in 1980 he has worked as an actor and director in film, television and theater. He has directed more than thirty hours of dramatic television and guest starred in more than a hundred episodes of television.

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