Austin On Stage - Your Online Source for Austin's Performing Arts

Different Stages Readies Horton Foote's Monologue Play The Carpetbagger's Children

Different Stages continues its 2009-2010 season with The Carpetbagger's Children by Horton Foote, the Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning author of plays and screenplays that include The Trip to Bountiful, Tender Mercies, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The production plays the Larry L. King Stage at Austin Playhouse from March 19th through April 10th.

In a series of monologues, three sisters spin the tale of their family and an era. Their father - the eponymous carpetbagger - was a former Union soldier who used his post as county treasurer and tax collector to amass a Texas plantation of twenty thousand acres. Preserving that plantation through the vicissitudes of their lives involves family secrets, tribal memories, and sibling rivalry.

Directed by Norman Blumensaadt (The Skin of Our Teeth), the production features Jennifer Underwood (Miss Witherspoon), Anne Hulsman (The Long Now) and Kathy Rose Center (Shakespeare's Husbands and Wives).

Performances will run Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $15 to $30.

The Austin Playhouse is located at 3601 South Congress in Penn Field. For more information and reservations, call (512) 474-8497 or visit www.Main.org/diffstages.

(Photo by Bret Brookshire)