Sam Shepards Fool For Love

Title: Fool For Love
Author: Sam Shepard

Nationality: American
Period and Setting: 1980's, Low rent motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert
Synopsis: At the top, Eddie is trying to reassure a very stricken May that he isn't going to leave. She
accuses him of cheating and he leaves. May freaks out and then he comes back in. They fight some more.
May threatens to kill both Eddie and his lover. He tries to calm her down by telling her how far he came
for her and his plans for the future. May says she doesn't want that and that she is sick of him sucking her
into his wonderful fantasy plans and then dropping her again. He says he plans to at least stay the night.
They embrace and kiss and then she knees him in the crotch and runs to the bathroom. The old man
explains to Eddie the difference between being a fantasist and a realist. May comes out and changes into a
sexy dress while telling Eddie she can't forgive him because she can't forget the picture she has of him with
The Countess and that he should leave because she has someone coming over to take her out. He gets upset
and leaves. May frantically throws some things into a suitcase, but hears him coming back and stops.
Eddie enters with a shotgun and some tequila. He pours a glass and begins to clean the shotgun while
telling May she can't be serious about this other guy because she called him a "man" not a "guy" so she
should let Eddie stay and meet him and then she can judge. She argues that whatever the two of them had,
it is stupid and it is over and tells him to leave. He picks up the pieces of his gun and leaves calling her a
traitor. May is thrown into instant and complete grief. As she mourns, the old man tells her a story about a
time he, May and May's mother were on a trip and May was a baby and started crying and he took her out
of the car to calm her and walked into a field in the dark and they were surrounded by cows and that got her
to stop. Eddie returns and May is at the table with the tequila. He tells her he doesn't believe that there is a
guy so he is going to wait to see. He starts lassoing the bed posts for practice and says when the guy gets
there, he is going to nail his ass to the floor. May gets up and leaves, but Eddie carries her back inside. He
says that May can just introduce him as her cousin and he will meet him and then just leave. Headlights
flash and May goes to the door and stands there looking out. She says there is a woman in a black Benz
staring at the room. Eddie shoves May out of the way and slams the door just as a gun shot is heard. He
flips the lights off, all the while claiming not to know who it is. May figures out that it is the Countess
following Eddie and gets angry. Eddie retaliates saying she obviously means nothing if he left her to go
hunt down May. The old man says how he can't see himself in them, but he can see their mothers. Eddie
says that no matter what May says or does he isn't going to leave her alone. May says that she can never
believe him anymore because he always does this and then leaves while she has either loved him or not
loved him and now she doesn't love him. Headlights flash again and Eddie turns the lights off and tells
May to hide, but May wants to confront her. They struggle and then the door opens and Martin tackles
Eddie because he thought May was being attacked but is stopped before he punches Eddie. Then Martin is
caught in a weird crossfire between May acting as though nothing is wrong and trying to make him
comfortable, and Eddie's obvious hostility and contradictions of May. May goes into the bathroom to get
ready for the date and Eddie talks with Martin making him more and more uncomfortable until Martin
decides to leave, but Eddie physically stops him. Martin asks if he is her husband and Eddie tells him he is
her half brother which kind of freaks Martin out and he asks how that came to be. Eddie tells how his
father had two women and spent time living with Eddie and Eddie's mother and then disappearing for
months, only to reappear and do it all over again. Then he says it stopped and his father just stayed for a
while and would take long walks, and one night Eddie asked to walk with him. His father took him and
they walked for a long, long time and then came to a house where a woman appeared and threw herself into
the old man's arms and there Eddie saw May and they fell in love then and there and never stopped. May
comes out and says that isn't true at all and he tells the same story all the time, but always lies. Martin tries
to leave, but Eddie tells him to stay to hear the rest of the story. May says she wants to go to the movies,
but Martin says he wants to stay, so May says she will finish the story and it will be the truth. She says that
her mother was desperately in love with the old man and hunted him down for years and finally found
where he lived, but he disappeared soon afterward. Her mother was in agony, but May was ecstatic
because she and Eddie were so desperately in love that they would get violently ill when separated. Her
mother recognized what was wrong and begged them not to see each other but they wouldn't listen. So she
went to Eddie's mother to ask her to stop it and Eddie's mother blew her head off. The old man protests this
and orders Eddie to correct her, but Eddie tells him it was true. The old man says that someone should have
told him. He blames May's mother for her relentless pursuit and says that the way she kept opening her
heart to him eventually made him fall in love with her and he couldn't help it. Throughout the speech,
Eddie and May have drawn closer and closer until they meet and kiss. Then headlights flash, there is the
sound of broken glass and flames rise up. Martin goes to the window and says Eddie's horse trailer is on
fire and the horses are loose. Eddie backs away from May and tells her he has to go check on it and The
Countess can't get away with it, but that he will be back in a second and he leaves. May pulls out a suitcase
and throws stuff in it. Martin asks if she needs help or a ride or if she is going to leave with Eddie. May
tells him that Eddie is gone and walks out the door. The old man points to a space and says the picture
there is the woman of his dreams. The space is opposite the space he indicated when telling Eddie the
picture there was a picture of his wife.
Unique Elements of Playwright's Style:

--Western themes
--violence
--isolation
--metaphoric statements
--people emotionally on the edge
--monologues
Production Challenges/Problems:
--Learning how to work a lasso for Eddie
--The extreme physicality it requires
--Making the doors boom as indicated by the script

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Sam Shepards Fool For Love

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Title: Fool For Love

Author: Sam Shepard

Unique Elements of Playwright's Style:

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