The Young Man From Atlanta

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The Young Man From Atlanta is a play by Horton Foote. It won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In this play Foote revived characters which had been in his The Orphan's Home cycle of nine plays. Will Kidder — 64 years old in this play — was in his early twenties in Lily Dale, and approaching middle age in Cousins. Sixty-year-old Lily Dale Kidder was introduced in Roots in a Parched Ground as a ten-year-old, and was portrayed in subsequent life stages in Lily Dale and Cousins. Her stepfather, 72-year-old Pete Davenport, first appears at age thirty in Roots in a Parched Ground. According to the playwright, he thought he was done with these characters after Cousins, but in the early 1990s found himself thinking about them again and started work on this play (Foote 1995).

The Young Man From Atlanta was first produced by the Signature Theatre Group in New York City. One of four Foote plays the group produced during its 1994/1995 season, it was directed by Pete Masterson and starred Ralph Waite as Will Kidder and James Pritchett as Pete Davenport. The production opened on January 27, 1995.

The 1997 Broadway production of the play at the Longacre Theatre was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, William Biff McGuire for Best Performance by a Featured Actor, Shirley Knight for the Best Performance by a Leading Actress and Director David Richenthal for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play.