In the new year, Season 16 will continue at the new Cannon Street Arts Center, located at 134 Cannon Street, with the Past Contemporaries Series. PURE will pay tribute to playwright Sam Shepard with the production of two of his masterworks, True West and Fool for Love. The “SHEP REP” plays will be presented in rotating repertory from January 11 through February 2.
True West
Finalist, 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Sons of a desert-dwelling alcoholic and a suburban wanderer clash over a film script. Austin, the achiever, is working on a script he has sold to producer Saul Kimmer when Lee, a demented petty thief, drops in. He pitches his own idea for a movie to Kimmer, who then wants Austin to junk his bleak, modern love story and write Lee’s trashy Western tale. This American classic explores alternatives that might spring from the unforgiving terrain of the California landscape.
Fool for Love
Finalist, 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The scene is a stark motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert. As the recriminations pour out between former lovers May and Eddie, 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 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 who sits in a rocking chair at the side of the stage, sipping whiskey and commenting wryly on what he observes. Eventually the two 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.
Click here for tickets.
–Tidelines Editors