About the Play:

Fool for Love has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, Female/Male Scenes, and Male/Male scenes.

Fool for Love is a full-length comedic drama by Sam Shepard. Holed up in a run-down motel on the edge of the Mojave Desert, two transient lovers unpack the deep secrets and dark desires of their tangled relationship, passionately tearing each other apart. Fool for Love is a struggle for power and truth.

Fool for Love is a masterfully constructed work brings searing intensity and rare theatrical excitement to its probing, yet sharply humorous study of love, hate and the dying myths of the Old West. The scene is a stark motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert. May, a dishevelled young woman, sits dejectedly on a rumpled bed while Eddie, a rough-spoken rodeo performer, crouches in a corner fiddling with his riding gear. When he attempts to console May, who is distressed by Eddie's frequent absences and love affairs, she seems, at first, to soften – but then she suddenly attacks him. As the recriminations pour out, and the action becomes, at times, physically violent, the desperate nature of their relationship becomes apparent – they cannot get along with, or without, one another, yet neither can subdue their burning passion. The poignancy of their situation (they are half-brother and half-sister as well as lovers) is pointed out by the play's two other characters: a hapless young man who stops by to take May to the movies and becomes the butt of Eddie's funniest yet most humiliating jokes; and a ghostly old man (perhaps their father) who sits in a rocking chair at the side of the stage, sipping whiskey and commenting wryly on what he observes. Eventually May and Eddie tire of their struggle and embrace – but it is evident that the respite is temporary and that their love, the curse of the past which haunts them, will remain forever damned and hopeless.

Fool for Love was first performed in 1983 at the Magic Theatre, San Francisco's most important and longtime playwrights' theatre. Its New York City premiere was in 1983 at the Circle Repertory Theatre where it was a critical and popular success, running for an even 1000 off-Broadway performances (his longest-running full-length play) before transferring to Broadway at the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre. It was a Finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Winner of the Obie Award. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in repertory, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 3 male

What people say:

"No one knows better than Sam Shepard that the true American West is gone forever, but there may be no writer alive more gifted at reinventing it out of pure literary air." — New York Times

"…Sam Shepard's purest and most beautiful play." — New York Daily News

"It is as mysterious and unsettling — now you see it, now you don't— as spare and, incidentally, as funny as anything he has ever done." — The New Yorker

"Fool for Love is certainly one of the best plays of our time. Fool for Love may very well be one of the great plays of the late twentieth century." — BackStage

"…a powerful addition to Shepard's impressive output ." — Variety

About the Playwright:

Sam Shepard (1943-2017) was an American playwright and actor. Born in Illinois and raised in Southern California, he worked as a farmhand and musician before moving to New York to begin his career as a playwright. The celebrated author – who New York Magazine called "the greatest American playwright of his generation" – wrote more than forty plays, eleven of which have won Obie Awards. His play Buried Child won the Pulitzer for drama. Two other plays True West and Fool for Love were nominated for the Pulitzers as well, and are frequently revived. As an actor he appeared in more than thirty films, including an Oscar nominated performance for his role as test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.