Fool for Love
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PRODUCER | STEPHEN M. KAUS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EMERITUS | JENNY GERSTEN WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL PRESENTS FOOL FOR LOVE BY SAM SHEPARD WITH CHRISTOPHER ABBOTT NINA ARIANDA SAM ROCKWELL GORDON JOSEPH WEISS SCENIC DESIGN COSTUME DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN SOUND DESIGN DANE LAFFREY ANITA YAVICH JUSTIN TOWNSEND RYAN RUMERY DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER MOVEMENT & FIGHTS CASTING ERIC NOTTKE KYLE GATES DAVID LEONG CALLERI CASTING DIRECTED BY DANIEL AUKIN SPONSORED BY JESSICA & MATT HARRIS and KK & BO PEABODY FOOL FOR LOVE IS PRESENTED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH DRAMATISTS PLAY SERVICE, INC., NEW YORK JULY 23 – AUGUST 2, 2014 | NIKOS STAGE WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL 2014 25 IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE CAST Eddie SAM ROCKWELL May NINA ARIANDA The Old Man GORDON JOSEPH WEISS Martin CHRISTOPHER ABBOTT SETTING A motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert. 26 WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL 2014 WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST & CREW *Member of Actors’ Equity Association SAM SHEPARD | Playwright CHRISTOPHER ABBOTT* | Martin SAM ROCKWELL* | Eddie [6th WTF Season] True West, The Tooth of Crime, [B’way] The House of Blue [5th WTF Season] A Streetcar Angel City, Icarus’ Mother, Operation Sidewinder. Leaves. [Off B’way] Where Named Desire, The Dumb [B’way] True West, Buried Child (Pulitzer Prize, We’re Born (Rattlestick), Waiter & The Zoo Story, Tony nom., Obie Award), Operation Sidewinder. That Face (Manhattan Hot L Baltimore. [B’way] [Off B’way] Kicking a Dead Horse, The God of Theatre Club), Good Boys A Behanding in Spokane. Hell, The Late Henry Moss, Eyes For Consuela, and True (Second Stage [Off B’way] The Last Days of Simpatico, The War in Heaven, When the World Theatre), Mouth to Mouth Judas Iscariot (The Public Was Green (A Chef’s Fable), Stages of Shock, A Lie (New Group), Playlist Theater), Face Divided of the Mind (New York Drama Critics’ Circle (Ars Nova), The Overwhelming (Roundabout (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Goose-Pimples Award, Outer Critics Circle Award), Fool for Theatre Company). [New York] The Happy Sad (New Group). Upcoming films include Lynn Love (Obie Award), The Unseen Hand, Tongues, (Summer Play Festival). [Film] Martha Marcy Shelton’s Laggies opposite Keira Knightly Curse of the Starving Class (Obie Award), May Marlene (Sundance, Gotham Award and Chloe Grace Moretz (September 2014), Action (Obie Award), The Tooth of Crime (Obie nom.) Hello I Must Be Going (Sundace), The Poltergeist opposite Rosemarie DeWitt Award), Forensic and the Navigators (Obie Sleepwalker (Sundance), All That I Am (SXSW) (February 2015), and Jared Hess’ Don Verdean. Award), Melodrama Play (Obie Award), Red James White, A Most Violent Year, Criminal Other film credits include: The Way Way Back, Cross (Obie Award), La Turista (Obie Award), Activities. [TV] “Girls,” “Nurse Jackie,” “Law A Single Shot, Better Living Through Chemistry, Icarus’s Mother (Obie Award), Chicago (Obie & Order: Criminal Intent.” [Awards] ‘A Fresh Trust Me, Loitering with Intent, Seven Psychopaths, Award). [Film] Zabriskie Point; Paris, Texas (Palme Face In Film’ Sundance Award. The Sitter, Cowboys and Aliens, Conviction, Iron d’Or, Cannes Film Festival); Far North; Silent Man 2, Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Tongue; Don’t come Knocking. He had his first NINA ARIANDA* | May Robert Ford, Everybody’s Fine, Moon, Choke, Frost/ New York plays, Cowboys and The Rock Garden [B’way] Venus in Fur Nixon, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, produced by Theatre Genesis. For several (2012 Tony Award), Born Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Charlie’s seasons, he worked with Off-Off-Broadway Yesterday (Tony Award Angels, Galaxy Quest, The Green Mile, Celebrity, theatre groups including La MaMa and Caffe nom., Outer Critics Clownhouse. [Edu] San Francisco’s High School Cino. Mr. Shepard has had an entire season Circle Award). [Off B’way] of the Performing Arts, William Esper Acting at Signature Theatre Company devoted to his Venus in Fur (CSC, AEA’s Studio. Sam would like to dedicate Eddie to work. Recently, Mr. Shepard continued his Clarence Derwent Award, Philip Seymour Hoffman. fruitful relationship with the Abbey Theatre Theatre World Award in Dublin with the commissioned, Ages of and Clive Barnes Award), Tales from Red GORDON JOSEPH the Moon. In 1986, he was inducted into the Vienna (Manhattan Theatre Club). [Film] The WEISS* | The Old Man American Academy of Arts and Letters. In Humbling, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, [B’way] Sly Fox, The Life, 1992, he received the Gold Medal for Drama Lucky Them, Rob the Mob, Tower Heist, Midnight Jelly’s Last Jam, The Visit, from the Academy and in 1994, he was in Paris, Higher Ground, Win Win. [TV] “30 Ghetto (Tony and Drama inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. In Rock,” “Hostages,” “The Good Wife.” [Edu] Desk noms.), Raggedy 2009, Mr. Shepard was honored with the title M.F.A. NYU’s Tisch graduate acting program. Ann, King of Hearts, of “Master” with the Laura Pels Foundation She thanks her incredibly supportive, loving, Goodtime Charley, Jumpers. Award for Drama. and good-looking parents. [Regional] King Lear, Treasure Island, Between the Lines (Actors Theatre of Louisville), The DANIEL AUKIN | Director Investigation, The Murder of Isaac, Queen and [Off B’way] Bad Jews (Roundabout Theatre the Rebels (Baltimore Center Stage) Inherit the Company), What Rhymes With America Wind (Ford’s Theatre), Tartuffe, Tobacco Road, (Atlantic Theater Company), Heartless Anna Christie (Triad Stage). [Film] Joe Gould’s (Signature Theatre Company), 4000 Miles Secret, Howard Stern: Private Parts, Awakenings, (Lincoln Center Theater), This (Playwrights Reversal of Fortune. [TV] “Law and Order,” Horizons), Back Back Back (Manhattan “Third Watch,” “Spin City,” “NYPD Blue,” Theatre Club), Everything Will Be Different, Sic “Pete and Pete,” “All My Children,” “As the (Obie Award), The Year of the Baby, Cat’s-Paw, World Turns,” “One Life to Live”. Love to my Molly’s Dream (Obie Award), The Ugly One, one and only Rosie. Suitcase (Soho Rep). [New York] The Bad and the Better (The Amoralists), [Regional] The Fortress of Solitude (Dallas Theater Center), The Royale (Center Theater Group), This (Center Theater Group), A View From the Bridge (Arena Stage), The Adding Machine (La Jolla Playhouse). [Other] Artistic Director of Soho Rep 1998–2006. WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL 2014 27 BETWEEN THE LINES “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,” wrote Frank Rich in his review of Fool for Love’s first New York production. Written and first performed in 1983, this play is considered by critics to be an addendum, along with A Lie of the Mind, to Shepard’s Family Trilogy written in the late ’70s. These plays—Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, and True West—are grouped together because they share a focus on family, and stylistically demonstrate Shepard’s movement toward his particular brand of raw, gritty, sometimes almost magical realism. This magical realism goes hand in hand with at a horse ranch before graduating from high For Shepard, the two Californias of his Shepard’s interest in the desert as the space school. As a young man, Shepard watched youth—the land of cowboys and the land that embodies the American mythology his the farm country of his youth be wiped away of superstars—are ultimately inextricable. plays often pick apart. Shepard has been as rancho California was replaced by the Indeed, much of Shepard’s work explores described as “an all-American literary hero” glitz and glam of Hollywood. this idea of duality. As he said about his play for his quintessentially American subject True West, the most recent in a long line of matter and his contemporary realist style The West was indelible in Shepard’s mind, Shepard plays produced at the Williamstown that is reminiscent of traditional playwrights remaining even after he moved to New Theatre Festival, “I wanted to write a play like Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill. His York in 1961, determined to have a career about double nature, one that wouldn’t be writing explodes traditional forms in order in acting. Once in New York, he quickly symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. to bring 20th century American drama into became interested in writing. His first play, I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels the modern age. called, appropriately enough, Cowboys, was like to be two-sided. It’s a real thing, double written in 1964, and Shepard continues to nature.” This double nature is personified Shepard was born in 1943 on an army base write to this day. Throughout his body of in the antagonism between the brothers of in southern Illinois and grew up all over work Shepard investigates what it means to True West: Hollywood screenwriter Austin the American Southwest—California, Texas, be an American, and while he has said he and drifting, troubled Lee who has just and New Mexico: desert country. His family never wants to live in the West again, it is emerged from months living alone in the eventually settled in Duarte, California, clear from his plays that the eerie, oppressive desert. In both True West and Fool for Love, where he took a job working as a stable hand allure of the desert still has a hold over him. the presence of the desert is overwhelming 28 WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL 2014 and oppressive, yet irresistible and thrilling his tale, a space as expansive as May and The electricity between Shepard’s characters to the play’s characters. Eddie describes its Eddie’s all-encompassing love, but also as draws the audience in and won’t let them power when he tries to convince Martin isolating.