Playwright Horton Foote Named Visiting Dramatist

Baylor University officials announced today that acclaimed American playwright Horton Foote has been named Visiting Distinguished Dramatist. Foote, who has received two Academy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, will work with theater students from Nov. 3-8 and will return to campus during the spring semester for additional activities, including a public lecture.
Beginning in 2004, the university will sponsor the Horton Foote Playwrights Festival, an annual week-long drama festival, and will present the Horton Foote Excellence in American Playwriting Award.
"Horton Foote is one of the world's greatest playwrights and certainly Texas' greatest natural resource," said Dr. Marion Castleberry, assistant professor of theater arts, who has known Foote for 20 years. "This is one of the most significant moments in the history of Baylor Theatre. Seldom does a theater arts department such as ours have the opportunity to work so closely with an Academy Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. I feel honored and blessed to be a part of something so exciting, and I look forward to a very rewarding partnership between Baylor and Horton Foote."
Born in Wharton, Texas, in 1916, Foote received his first Academy Award in 1962 for his screenplay of To Kill a Mockingbird and his second in 1983 for Tender Mercies. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his play The Young Man from Atlanta.
In 1989, he was the recipient of The William Inge Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. More recent honors include a Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy of Arts and Letters, an Emmy Award for his television adaptation of William Faulkner's The Old Man and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Writer's Guild of America. He received the National Medal of Arts Award from President Bill Clinton.
For more information, contact Dr. Stan Denman, chair of the department of theater arts, at (254) 710-1861.