Sam Shepard's Fool For Love, directed by Ed Harris at Roundabout

Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) is proud to announce Ed Harris will direct the Broadway premiere production of Sam Shepard's drama Fool For Love at the American Airlines Theatre (227 West 42nd Street). Previews begin on January 14th, 2005 and opens officially Thursday, February 10th, 2005. This is a limited engagement through April 3rd, 2005.

Twenty-one years after originating and earning an Obie Award for Outstanding Actor for the role of "Eddie" in the original, off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Fool for Love, Ed Harris comes back to New York City to direct the Broadway premiere production of the play. This production will also mark Ed Harris' Broadway directing debut. His feature film-directing debut, Pollock received two Oscar nominations.

In 1986, Harris made his Broadway debut in George Furth's Precious Sons (Tony nomination, Drama Desk Award). He also appeared Off-Broadway in Sam Shepard's Simpatico (Lucille Lortel Award) and on Broadway in Ronald Harwood's Taking Sides. Harris's other stage credits include Prairie Avenue, Scar, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Grapes of Wrath and Sweet Bird of Youth.

Fool for Love was first produced at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco in February 1983, before moving to Off-Broadway at the Circle Repertory Theatre on May 26, 1983 and transferring to the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre on November 27, 1983. Sam Shepard directed these original productions, winning Obie Awards for his writing and directing as well as the award for best new American play.

The cast and designers will be announced shortly.

Sam Shepard's sexually charged opus takes place on the barren edge of the Mojave Desert, where two lovers, holed up in a seedy motel, battle for absolute power in their love-hate affair. Passion rages into the wee hours, until the unspoken secret behind their attraction is revealed, proving how dangerously simple it is for anyone to become a fool for love.

Biographies:

Ed Harris (Director). Ed Harris is currently filming New Line's A History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen and William Hurt for director David Cronenberg. He has recently wrapped production opposite Paul Newman on the HBO film Empire Falls, based on Richard Russo's best-selling novel, directed by Fred Schepisi. The film also stars Joanne Woodward, Helen Hunt, Robin Wright Penn and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Harris also wrapped the Focus Films drama Winter Passing, opposite Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel and Amy Madigan for director Adam Rapp. In 2003, Harris earned his fourth Academy Awards nomination, a Golden Globe nomination, a Screen Actors Guild nomination, and a BAFTA nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Stephen Daldry's The Hours. Previously, he earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for Pollock, his widely acclaimed directorial debut. The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and co-starred Marcia Gay Harden, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Harris' other feature credits include The Human Stain, Radio, Buffalo Soilders, A Beautiful Mind, Stepmom, The Truman Show (for which he received an Academy Award nomination and won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor), Apollo 13 (for which he was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and for which he won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor), The Right Stuff, Glengarry Glen Ross, A Flash of Green, Walker, The Third Miracle, Alamo Bay, Sweet Dreams, Jacknife, and The Firm. His television credits include The Last Innocent Man, Running Mates, Paris Trout and Riders of the Purple Sage (for which he and his wife Amy Madigan, as co-producers and co-stars of the film, were presented with the prestigious Western Heritage Wrangler Award for Outstanding Television Feature Film).

SAM SHEPARD (Playwright). Born Samuel Shepard Rogers (nicknamed "Steve") on November 5, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, Sam Shepard would later change his name--reportedly because "Steve Rogers was the name of the original Captain America." He would work as a stable hand, herdsman, orange picker, sheep shearer, bus boy, waiter and musician before beginning his career as a playwright in New York in 1964 with the Theatre Genesis production of two one-act plays, Cowboys and The Rock Garden, at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery. A product of the 1960s counterculture, Shepard combines wild humor, grotesque satire, myth, and a sparse, haunting language to create a subversive pop art vision of America. His characters are typically loners and drifters caught between a mythical past and the mechanized present. In Cowboys, two buddies play what seems to be a game of cowboys and indians, re-enacting key episodes from Western mythology--episodes which lead to decay, stasis, and the apparent death of one of the characters. His first full-length play, La Turista, was performed at the American Place Theatre and won an Obie in 1967. The Tooth of Crime (1972), a rock-drama written during the four years he lived in London, tells the story of two rock-stars of different generations who battle for territorial domination of an empire. Their duel to the death is not a gun battle, but a rap session in which each musician uses verbal incantations in order to pierce the mask and shatter the confidence of his opponent. The play was staged in its American premiere at Princeton University in 1972. Curse of the Starving Class followed in 1978, marking a new direction in Shepard's approach. The plays written from this point on feature a somewhat more realistic style, although they retain devices of disturbing and imaginative surrealism such as the absent-but-present father who is able to confer with the son and daughter who have conjured him up in Fool for Love (1982). Mr. Shepard spent several successful seasons with off-off-Broadway groups such as La Mama and Caffe Cino and was playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco for a number of years. In 1979 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Buried Child, and in 1984 he gained an Oscar nomination for his part as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. Other plays by Sam Shepard include Mad Dog Blues (1971), True West (1980), A Lie of the Mind (1985), Simpatico (1993) and Eyes for Consuela (1998). His screenplay for Paris, Texas won the Golden Palm Award at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. In 1986 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1992 he received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy. In 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.

Ticket Information:

Tickets will be available in early 2005 by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212) 719-1300, online at www.roundabouttheatre.org, or at the box office of the American Airlines Theatre (227 West 42nd Street).

Roundabout Theatre Company is one of the country's leading not-for-profit theatres. The Company contributes invaluably to New York's cultural life by staging the highest quality revivals of classic plays and musicals as well as new plays by established writers in three different venues each perfectly suited for the variety of work. Roundabout consistently partners great artists with great works to bring a fresh and exciting interpretation that makes each production relevant and important to today's audiences.

Roundabout Theatre Company productions are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation; New York State Council on the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. American Airlines is the official airline of Roundabout Theatre Company. The Westin Hotel is the official hotel of the Roundabout Theatre Company.

www.roundabouttheatre.org