About
the Play:
Fool for Love and Other Plays contains eight of
Pulitzer-prizewinning Sam Shepard's most stunning plays, with
an introduction by Ross Wetzsteon. This brilliant American
dramatist creates what The New Yorker dubbed "Shepard
Country" – a landscape of the imagination, a unique
theatrical experience that captures our culture and consciousness,
our fears and fantasies. The collection Fool for Love and Other
Plays includes:
Fool for Love: Holed up in a run-down motel on the edge of the
Mojave Desert, two former lovers unpack the deep secrets and dark
desires of their tangled relationship, passionately tearing each
other apart. (Cast: 1 female, 3 male)
Angel City: Based on Shepard's own experiences working on
the screenplay of Zabriskie Point for Michelangelo Antonioni, this
early work portrays a young stuntman, turned script fixer, who is hired by
money-mad studio executives to save their failing big budget picture from
financial disaster by turning it into a disaster film that will make people buy tickets. But it has to be a new disaster, one that no one's ever imagined before. The stuntman tries to come up with an idea that will save the day, but comes to realize that he just a part
of the Great American Dream Machine that is Hollywood. Angel City
shines a light on the corruption of the artistic imagination,
particularly in the movie business where cinema has been corrupted by
capitalism and the artists who de-create rather than create. (Cast: 1
female, 5 male)
Geography of a Horse Dreamer: Follows the fate of Cody, who
has the unique ability to predict the outcome of horse races in his
dreams. Taken from the great plains of Wyoming, he as been held
captive by gangsters for years, but when he loses his magical talent,
his usefulness to his captors is called into question. Cody's fate is
symbolic of the visionary artist held captive by society. (Cast: 8
male)
Action: Two men and two women drink coffee and wait for a turkey to finish roasting in the oven. The women do ordinary household tasks and appear to be
normal beings. On the other hand, the men, with shaven heads, seem
like stage humanoids. They are subject to fits and fears. The four
seem lost in time and place – even as they act out strange roles
while still doing ordinary things. Eventually the turkey is carved and the true nature of the landscape
outside the house is revealed as a post-apocalyptic nightmare. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)
Cowboy Mouth: Set in 1971 Los Angeles when punk, rock and
new wave collide, the play is the story of a woman who kidnaps a
young man with a wife and kid off the street at gunpoint, with the
hopes of inspiring him to be a rock and roll star. Surviving only on
music, their reveries, and special order food, the two would-be rock
stars fall in love and journey together into a lyrical no man's land
where they test their love and the power dynamics between captor and
captive. Viewed as a thinly disguised but deeply personal
autobiography, Cowboy Mouth was conceived while Sam Shepard
and former romantic partner Patti Smith lived together at the Chelsea
Hotel in 1971. Passing a typewriter back and forth, they crafted a
cautionary tale about using art as deliverance from our own flaws,
and falling in love with the person, not the potential. (Cast: 1
female, 2 male)
Melodrama Play: The haunted rock star in this play is
another of Shepard's favorite figures, the artist entangled in the
terrifying web of fantasy and deception. (Cast: 1 female, 5 male)
Seduced: How does it benefit a man if he gains the world but loses his ever-loving mind? Dealing with Henry Hackamore, an almost surreal Howard Hughes-like
figure, a bearded recluse who is the richest man in the world. A pioneer aviator, Hackmore made billions in the aerospace industry and was an obsessive womanizer – until his horror of microbes reduced him to hands-off voyeurism. Now a deranged phobic, he languishes, sustained by constant blood transfusions and memories of past glory. Power corrupts, but absolute power just might confer immortality in this
often comic and brilliantly revealing allegory that continues the
playwright's preoccupation with the mythic aspects of American life.
(Cast: 2 female, 2 male)
Suicide in B Flat: Stumbling through Sam Shepard's
familiar mythical, metaphysical universe are two gumshoes trying to
solve the mysterious murder of Niles, a famous jazz musician. Who is
the culprit? Who, in fact, is the victim for that matter? A very
funny, strikingly original play. (Cast: 2 female, 3 male)
What people say:
"Each of the plays in this
collection has a plot and characters for the same reason jet fighters
have wheels – to get off the ground. Personal history,
interlocking events, and the representation of stable, enduring
character all have a small place in these dramas compared to the
spectacle of Shepard thinking in them. Shepard works out the
problematic connections of artistic creativity to reality in a world
ruled by money, and forces the truth from mass culture's symbols of
freedom and identity through violent exaggeration." — The
Christian Science Monitor
"Sam Shepard is
phenomenal … the best practicing American playwright." —
The New Republic
"Sam Shepard is
the most exciting presence in the movie world and one of the most
gifted writers ever to work on the American stage ." —
Marsha Norman , Pulitzer prizewinning author of Night,
Mother
"The most ruthlessly
experimental and uncompromising of today's young writers." —
The New Yorker
"Sam Shepard fills
the role of professional playwright as a good ballet dancer or
acrobat fulfills his role in performance. That is, he always
delivers, he executes feats of dexterity and technical difficulty
that an untrained person could not, and makes them seem easy."
— The Village Voice
"One of the most original,
prolific and gifted dramatists at work today." — New
York Times
"Increasingly recognized as
one of the more significant dramatists in the English-speaking
world." — Modern Drama
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.