Talking Pictures, by Horton Foote March 9, 2011

It’s the summer of 1929, and Myra Tolliver, a divorced woman, is struggling to raise her teenage son in the small town of Harrison, Texas. It’s not been easy for her, but she’s managed to get by. But now, everything around her is starting to change. She’s been making her living by playing piano in one of the state’s last silent picture houses, and now the talkies are taking over. Her son Pete is feeling stifled by his life in Harrison, and he wants to go live with his father and his new family in Houston. The Jackson family, from whom Myra rents living space, may have to move to soon. And Myra’s would-be suitor, Willis, has been unable to afford a divorce from the wife who abandoned him some five years earlier.
And yet, despite circumstances which could easily prompt despair and self-pity, Myra and the people around her have a core of resilience (and humor) which allow them not only to survive, but to feel hopeful about the future.
Stage West is pleased to present, as Tarrant County’s representative in the Foote Festival, Horton Foote’s Talking Pictures, which prompted the New York Times to say “It creeps up and dazzles you with moments of extraordinary pathos that alternate with those of uproarious comedy…”