In 2009, a rather curious meeting took place at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. In one row sat representatives from a musical theater. In front of them, people from a theater that focuses on 20th-century American plays. On the other side of the aisle, a contingent from a gay theater. Next to them, a company that produces only plays written by women. Then there was the guy whose theater last produced a play that had puppets performing sex acts onstage. Not far from him sat the director of a theater that uses puppets to do fairy tales for children.

It is safe to assume that these people had never sat in the same room together before. Who says Bible Belt Dallas isn’t diverse and provocative?

Playing secretary general to this thespian summit was Kevin Moriarty, artistic director of the Dallas Theater Center. He had called together the forces of the Dallas theater community to propose something radical: a collaboration to honor one of Texas’ great artists, Horton Foote, the beloved playwright from the little Southeast Texas town of Wharton who died in March 2009. Moriarty’s idea was to celebrate the man with a community-wide festival, producing as many of the Pulitzer-, Academy Award-, and Emmy-winning playwright’s works as possible.

If they could pull it off, it would be the largest ever intercompany collaboration in the city’s history, a project that would place Dallas’ theater scene in the national spotlight, carrying the banner for Texas arts. But, as Moriarty admits, he had no idea if his audience of performers and presenters would bite.

“Almost everyone came,” Moriarty says. “It was remarkable. We weren’t even sure if anyone was going to show up.” But they did show up, and it didn’t take long for everyone to sign on with the project. The festival starts March 14. “It was the instant spark in the room. One by one, theaters jumped in right there at that meeting, including some theaters for whom Horton Foote is right at the center of what they do, and some for whom his work is quite different than their more experimental or contemporary work.”

Moriarty says that since he took the position as the head of Dallas’ regional theater in 2007, he had been trying to think of ways not just to highlight Dallas artists but to “tell stories about Texas here in Texas.” “The very first writer I thought of was Horton Foote,” he says. “All of his writing takes place in a fictional town in Texas. His characters are soaked in the ethos of the state.”

At first Moriarty imagined producing more than one Foote play at the Dallas Theater Center, but he determined the task would be too large. He then considered mounting a large production of a single play. As Moriarty was working through these ideas, Horton Foote died. That led to a renewed interest in the playwright’s work, from profiles in The New Yorker to an off-Broadway revival of Foote’s magnum opus, the Orphans’ Home Cycle, a series of plays completed between 1962 and 1999 that ran in repertory to wide critical acclaim beginning in 2009. The national enthusiasm for Foote’s work prompted Moriarty to think bigger.

“Part of what struck me about his voice was this idea of a community teeming with fictional life,” he says. “It just seemed like the plays were too big. We could not take on more than one. So I thought, ‘If we can’t do that, who else could?’ I started meeting with other arts leaders, beginning with [WaterTower Theatre producing artistic director] Terry Martin and [Theatre 3 artistic director] Jac Alder.”

“Having been a longtime fan, I wondered why a Foote festival wasn’t done in Dallas — if not Texas,” Martin says. Martin and Alder encouraged Moriarty to cast the net even wider, and the trio finally decided to hold a community-wide meeting. “A lot of theaters have come on and some have dropped out,” Martin says. “But I’m hopeful that it has broken down doors, that getting everyone in one room opened the lines of communication.”

Along the way, the Foote Festival has picked up collaborators from outside the theater community. The Dallas Museum of Art will host lectures on the playwright. The Dallas Film Society will show some of the films for which Foote wrote screenplays, including To Kill a Mockingbird. Also, fortuitously, Foote’s papers are housed at SMU’s DeGolyer Library, which will host a free exhibition.

The festival will offer Dallas audiences an opportunity for a month-long immersion in the artist’s work. Events surrounding the festival will include visits from some of Foote’s family, many of whom are important interpreters of his work. Moriarty says he is most excited to see how the festival will enliven Dallas’ acting community — all those actors working through the material of an “actors’ playwright,” rehearsal conversations spilling into bars.

But the festival also promises to bring new attention to Dallas’ theater scene. “We have one of the strongest theater scenes in the country, and no one knows about it,” Martin says. “It is a tremendous opportunity for Dallas to get national press.”

For more information on the festival visit here. Here is a complete list of participants:

Stage West: Talking Pictures; March 10 – April 3

Dallas Theater Center: Dividing the Estate; March 11 – April 9

Southern Methodist University DeGolyer Library: Life and Work of Horton Foote: An Exhibition; March – May

Studio Movie Grill: To Kill a Mockingbird; March 17

First United Methodist Church Dallas Rotunda Theatre: The Old Beginning, John Turner Davis; March 25, 26, 31, April 1, 2, 2011

Flower Mound Performing Arts Theater: Three Readings: A Nightingale, The Dancers, The Land of the Astronauts; March 27, April 3, and April 10

Kitchen Dog Theater: 3 FOOTE: An Evening of Three One-Act Plays; April 1 – April 30

Uptown Players: Young Man From Atlanta; April 1 – 17

WaterTower Theatre: The Traveling Lady; Previews begin April 1; Performances run April 4 – May 1, 2011

Dallas Museum of Art – Arts & Letters Live: Horton Foote: Memories, Readings & Recollections; April 4

Theatre Three: The Roads to Home; April 7 – May 7

WingSpan Theatre Company and One Thirty Productions: A Two Day Staged Reading of The Carpetbagger’s Children; April 8 – 9

Contemporary Theater of Dallas: A Trip to Bountiful; April 8 – May 1

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Theatre Department: Courtship, The Young Lady of Property, The Dancers; April 13 – 15; 20 – 21

KERA will also present an evening of Horton Foote programming.   Details TBA.