Preview: Emory’s ‘Fool For Love’ is the steamy, violent breakdown of a star-crossed couple 

It has been awhile since anyone in Atlanta staged one of Sam Shepard’s plays, which are known for demanding a great deal both from performers and audiences.

Theater Emory, always game for a challenge, is producing the modern classic Fool for Love November 12 through November 22. This intense drama explores shameful secrets and forbidden but consuming passions. It also delivers several familiar tropes from Shepard’s later work, such as ever-flowing booze and the myth of the cowboy.

The playwright launched his career with absurdist narratives and then shifted to blunt naturalism. Fool for Love premiered in 1983 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where he was the playwright-in-residence. It was also a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Shepard died in 2017. 

“He was a frustrated rock ‘n’ roller who came into playwriting by accident,” says Director Mary Lynn Owen. “And he was very much interested in the myth of the American cowboy.” 

The play is something of a departure for Emory’s usual lineup because of its adult themes, as well as scenes that are both steamy and violent. Micah Patt serves as the fight choreographer and the intimacy coordinator for these adrenalized moments. 

“Fool for Love asks actors to do just about everything,” says Owen, who is directing this play for the first time despite her career-long love for Shepard. “It’s challenging because the actors have to be completely present — to turn on a dime emotionally, to engage in all kinds of verbal and physical combat. It’s a workout physically, emotionally and verbally. It asks you to go to the wall.”

In a seedy motel on the edge of the Mojave Desert, former lovers Eddie (Chase Brown) and May (Morgan Schatmeyer) are drawn back into their volatile cycle of passion and pain. As their shared history as half-siblings begins to surface and the ghostly presence of their father weighs in, they must confront the truth of a fatalistic relationship neither seems able to escape.

“Eddie and May are one of those couples who can’t be together and can’t be apart,” Owen says. “It’s all about the driving force within us that we can’t seem to lasso.”

The swaggering character of Eddie fits Shepard’s cowboy archetype. “He is a gung-ho cowboy — a loud, rambunctious maverick who knows how to have fun,” says Brown. “But he’s also a fantasist with delusions. Family trauma has affected him and will stay with him forever.”

May is the only female voice, and Owen makes the most of her. “I’ve taken a rather feminist approach to this play,” the director says. “Eddie seems to call all the shots, but May is a fireball, a force to be reckoned with. And I’m making little touches here and there. Where Shepard calls for a Merle Haggard song, I plan to insert a woman’s vocals.”

Schatmeyer calls her character “utterly relentless” and says she relishes a particular monologue about May’s mother. “It’s an ode that includes a vow to break the cycles of her past. She’s trapped by her own heart but desperately wants to be the best version of herself.” 

Running only 60 minutes, the production is “jam-packed with action from start to finish,” Owen adds. The aura of decay is achieved with a moody set by Alexander Whittenberg. “He created a run-down, abandoned-seeming motel with stark furnishings, paneled walls and broken neon,” Owen says. “We have everything but the vibrating bed.”

And do these star-crossed lovers enjoy a neat, tidy resolution and ride off into a Western sunset? No — there’s nothing neat and tidy about it.

“This is a tequila-soaked [card] to love, lovers, the American West and the passions that lurk inside us that we either run from or embrace — all told with the rat-tat-tat dialogue that comes with a Shepard play,” says Owen. 

Where and When

Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love is on stage at Theater Emory’s Mary Grace Munroe Theater November 12 through November 22. Tickets are $20, with discounts available. 630 Means Drive. 

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Candice Dyer’s work has appeared in magazines such as Atlanta, Garden & Gun, Men’s Journal and Country Living. She is the author of Street Singers, Soul Shakers, Rebels with a Cause: Music from Macon.