Warehouse Theatre To Honor Late Playwright Sam Shepard With Repertory Festival Featuring TRUE WEST and BURIED CHILD

Warehouse Theatre will present The Sam Shepard Festival, a theatre repertory series honoring the American playwright Sam Shepard. The Festival will include fully staged productions of the Pulitzer Prize winning play Buried Child, the Tony Award winning play True West, and the semi-autobiographical play Cowboy Mouth, as well as readings on Curse of the Starving Class, Heartless, and Fool for Love.

Shepard, one of the most important and influential writers of his generation, specialized in capturing the darker sides of American family life. His playwriting career, spanning half a decade, included 55 plays (his last, A Particle of Dread, had its premiere in 2014). The festival will run August 31 through September 22, 2018 at MadLab Theatre located downtown at 227 North Third Street.

The Festival will kick off with 6 performances of True West (1980), running August 31-September 9, 2018. This American classic, about sons of a desert-dwelling alcoholic and a suburban wanderer who clash over a film script, explores alternatives that might spring from the demented terrain of the California landscape.

The chaotic drama about sibling rivalry, stars Brandon Maldonado and Justin King who will play both of the battling brothers-Lee and Austin-jumping from the drifter brother at one performance to the screenwriting brother at the next, switching back and forth for the duration of the run. The production will be directed by Warehouse Theatre Artistic Director Kristofer Green.

Next, the festival will offer 4 performances of the rarely produced, semi-autobiographical play Cowboy Mouth (1971) running September 6-16, 2018. The play, written with Patti Smith over the course of several sleepless days and nights, tells the story of Slim and Cavale, two rock n' rollers holed up in a disheveled apartment await a special delivery in the form of their iconic, visionary savior "the Lobster Man". The production will be directed by Michelle Steinhour.

The final offering in the festival will be 8 performances of Shepard's Pulitzer Prize winning Buried Child (1978) running September 13-22, 2018.. This powerful and brilliant play probes deep into the disintegration of the American Dream. The setting is a squalid farm home occupied by a family that is unhinged by a dark secret and filled with suppressed violence and an unease born of deep-seated unhappiness. The production will be directed by James Harper.

The festival will also feature readings of Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class (1978) on September 5, 2018; Heartless (2012) on September 9, 2018; and Fool for Love (1983) on September 19, 2018.

Curse of the Starving Class balances dark comedy and biting satire in its look at a family fighting to stay alive. The play focuses on the disturbed Tate family-the drunken father, burned-out mother, rebellious teenage daughter, and idealistic son-as they struggle for control of the rundown family farm in a futile search for freedom, security, and ultimately meaning in their lives. The reading will be directed by Jesse Daniel Trieger and will occur Wednesday, September 5 at 7pm at MadLab Theatre.

Heartless, the first Shepard play in which female characters outnumber the male characters, tells the story of a dysfunctional, fragmented family of women living in desert. A disagreeable caregiver named Lucy is nursing her sister Sally, who suffers from some mysterious malady. The sisters live under the shadow of their tyrannical mother Mabel, who fell out of a tree decades ago and is confined to a wheelchair, ministered to by a mute blond nurse named Liz. The female ménage-a-quatre is disturbed by the arrival of Roscoe, whom Sally has taken in after he abandoned his wife and children. The reading will be directed by Emmi Robison and will occur Sunday, September 9 at 3pm at MadLab Theatre.

Fool for Love, a masterfully constructed work that 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. Set in a seedy 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. Beaten down by ill-fated love and a ruthless struggle for identity, can they ultimately live with, or without, each other? The reading will be directed by Michael Solomon and will occur Sunday, September 16 at 3pm at MadLab Theatre.

Festival passes and Flex passes range in price from $48.00 to $80 are available at www.warehousetheatre.org or by calling 614-984-6974

To post a comment, you must register and login.