Neil LaBute's "The Shape of Things"

Neil LaBute's play "The Shape of Things" premiered at the Almeida Theatre in London 2001. The play consists of four characters and 10 scenes. At its premier, the show was directed by LaBute and has specific instructions to be performed without intervals or a curtain call. This play explores issues such as stoicism, art, psychopathy, intimacy and love. Other notable performances of the show were in New York City at the Bernie West Theater under the direction of Brian Rhinehart. It was also performed in London in 2011 at The Gallery Soho on Charing Cross Road under the direction of Tom Attenborough. "The Shape of Things" was also produced as a movie in 2003. LaBute directed the film himself.

Neil LaBute was born in 1963 in Detroit, MI. LaBute attended Brigham Young University where he received his undergraduate degree and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is known for his contemporary plays that commonly push the envelope. While at BYU he produced several plays that were controversial, some of which were shut down after the premier. He was awarded "most promising undergraduate playwright" despite his numerous failures. He attended graduate school at the University of Kansas and the Royal Academy of London.

"The Shape of Things", as stated previously, is meant to be performed with no interruptions or curtain call. This is a common theme throughout LaBute's plays. LaBute returned to BYU in 1997 to premier his play "In the Company of Men", which won an award from the Association for Mormon Letters. In addition to being a playwright, LaBute is also a successful film director. He taught drama and film at Perdue University in Indiana. "In the Company of Men" was transformed to a film that won several awards, including the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival. LaBute has been praised for his portrayals of conflicting men and women in this film and play.

A more recent play written by LaBute is "Fat Pig" (2004). This play was very personal for LaBute considering he is considered "fat". It deals with issues including love, image, deception and heartbreak. It premiered off-Broadway in 2004 at the MCC Theater in New York City.

Discussion questions about "The Shape of Things":

1.) Overall, do you think what Evelyn did to Adam was worth it?

2.) Do you think Evelyn had a more positive or negative effect on Adam's life?

3.) How do you think Evelyn was affected by her "experiment"? Do you think she faked her feelings for Adam?

4.) Do you consider Evelyn's experiment to be "art"? Explain.

5.) If you had the opportunity to conduct this experiment, would you? If yes, would you do it any differently?

6.) If you were in Phillip and Jenny's position, would you take Adam back as a friend? Why or why not?

7.) What do you think happened at the end of Scene 5 (after Jenny and Adam kissed)?

8.) Do you think Evelyn could have conducted this experiment and had real feelings for Adam? Would her results have been the same?

9.) Do you agree or disagree with the following quote  from Adam: "When Picasso took a shit, he didn't call it art. He knew the difference. That's what made him Picasso."? How can one person decide what is and isn't art?

10.) Do you think Evelyn considered Adam's feelings throughout her experiment? Do you think she considered the possibility that he might not do everything she suggested (i.e., work out more, lose weight, change appearance, etc.)?

11.) If you were in Adam's position, what would you have done in the final scene? Would you understand Evelyn's perspective or demand more answers?

12.) In your opinion, do you think Evelyn gave Adam the chance to say no to any of her suggestions? Think back to Scene 6 (doctor's office: nose job, men's rest room).

13.) What do you think Evelyn whispered in Adam's ear "that one time"?

"Shopping and Fucking" by Mark Ravenhill

Mark Ravenhill was born June 7, 1966.  He grew up in West Sussex, England and cultivated an interest in theatre early in life, putting on plays with his brother when they were young. He studied English and Drama at Bristol University from 1984–1987, and held down jobs as a freelance director, workshop leader and drama teacher.

In 1997, Ravenhill became the literary director of a new writing company, Paines Plough. In 2003, when Nicholas Hytner took over as artistic director of the National Theatre, Ravenhill was brought in as part of his advisory team. In the mid-nineties, Ravenhill was diagnosed as HIV+, his partner of the early 1990s having died from AIDS.

In his early writing career, Ravenhill’s writing style was focused mostly on the diversity of human sexuality.  His plays were usually black comedies that had gay men as the main characters.   In November 2007, however, he announced that he would be focusing on heterosexual characters.

In 2008 the Royal Court, The Gate Theatre, the National Theatre, Out of Joint, and Paines Plough collectively presented the seventeen short plays Ravenhill wrote for the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe under the title Ravenhill for Breakfast, which was retitled as Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat. In 2009 Mark Ravenhill presented a staged reading of transcripts of conversations with actor, drag queen and equal rights activist Bette Bourne A Life In Three Acts at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2009, and at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn NY as well as the Soho Theatre in London in 2010.  Ravenhill is a regular contributor to the annual Terror Season at the Southwark Playhouse in London.

Ravenhill was appointed Associate Director of London's Little Opera House at The King's Head Theatre in September 2010. He played an active role in the venue's relaunch as London's third Opera House. In 2012, Ravenhill became the Royal Shakespeare Company's Writer in Residence.  The same year, he was commissioned by the London Gay Men's Chorus for a piece to mark the choir's 21st anniversary.

 

Shopping and Fucking was Mark Ravenhill’s first full length play written in 1995.  It’s first reading was at Finborough Theatre in London 1995.  It premiered in 1996 at the Royal Court Upstairs in London’s West End.  After its premier the production went on a national and international tour produced by Out of Joint and Royal Court. When it premiered, the play got mixed reviews.  Some were shocked by the sexual violence.  Other critics were drawn to the black humor of the play.  This play, along with Sarah Kane’s Blasted is considered the poster children for In-Yer-Face Theatre.

The Story focuses on Mark, a recovering drug addict who is struggling with trying to find out if feelings exist that aren’t drug induced.  He is also struggling with being emotionally dependent with his lovers, Robbie and Lulu.  Robbie and Lulu are in the middle of a drug deal gone wrong.  They have agreed to sell ecstasy but Robbie has broken the only rule of selling drugs.  Do not do the drugs you are selling.  Then later he gives the drugs away at a rave and now the supplier is after them both.  To try and curb his dependence on his emotions, Mark has sought out a sexual transaction.  He meets Gary, an underage prostitute who has been sexually abused by his step-father causing him to be aroused by violent acts of sex. 

This play touches on many social issues like drug abuse, rape, and mental illness. 

1.       Do you think Mark’s reasoning behind his emotional detachment from Robbie and Lulu is justified?

2.      In what ways does Shopping and Fucking incorporate Marxist philosophies?

3.      What happens when Mark starts performing a certain sexual act to Gary?

 

(This post was by Brady Lewis)

Sarah Kane's "4.48 Psychosis" -Mark Gibson

    Sarah Kane was born in 1971 in Essex on February 3rd. She came from a linage of writers as both her parents were journalists. Her family was very religious, a faith she claimed to until she was 17. She studied drama at Bristol University where she graduated with first class honors in 1992. Afterwards she did her MA at Birmingham University. She struggled with manic depression for many years, needing hospitalization at one point. During hospitalization she attempted suicide via an overdose of sleeping pills. She was unsuccessful but attempted suicide a few days later where she achieved her goal a few days later and died by hanging on the 20th of February of 1999.
     As a playwright her plays dealt with themes of death, sex, violence and mental illness. Her plays are characterized by an increasing poetic intensity, and a rich affirmation of love in all its forms. Her use of sharp violence gives a powerful image that fragments the narrative in order to convey the experience of life torn up by its roots.
     Before her premature end, Kane led a promising career and became acknowledged as a major force in British theatre and one of the key figures in the so-called In-yer-face theatre. This type of theatre grips the audience in a way that is perhaps uncomfortable but gets the point across. Her first plays were not accepted in society as well as they are now due to the intense violence and grim imagery. Not until her fourth play Crave, which she wrote under a pseudonym of Marie Kelvedon in order to keep the critics from bias created by the shocking and brutal violence of her previous plays. 
     She produced six works in her lifetime Blasted, Phaedra’s Love, Skin, Cleansed, Crave and 4.48 Psychosis. . Blasted was produced in 1995 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. Pheadra’s Love was produced in 1996 at the Gate Theatre, London. Skin was an eleven minute film with a script written by Kane. In 1998 Cleansed was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Crave was produced at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. Her last play was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in London a year after her death.



      4.48 Psychosis deals with a patient in a psychiatric ward who is suffering from severe depression. The script goes between dialogues between the patient and the doctors and an inner monologue the patient has with herself. The main subject of the play is that of severe clinical depression and the patient being diagnosed with pathological grief. This play does not adhere to conventional theatrical form and so many adaptations have been made since its inception in 1999. The wording of the text varies as well between naturalistic and highly abstract or poetic. These techniques were very effective in portraying the mind of the patient as she slowly slips into psychotic breakdown.
     The story touches upon several subjects that plague a psychiatric ward including pathological lying, self injury, suicidal thoughts and the emotional struggles of patients dealing with psychosis. A part of the script goes through a doctor’s notes on the patient depicting the progress of the patient and the use of medications. First is the diagnosis of pathological grief and then the barrage of psychiatric medications used as treatments. Unfortunately not every drug is a miracle.
     4.48 Psychosis is also about a relationship between the doctor and patient and the difficulties that ensue. Professional relationships can be the most taxing of relationships as both parties have to avoid attachment to each other, called transposition, and keep everything within the context of the doctor patient relationship. Many times complications can arise through emotional attachment and the doctor has to come up with a decision to transfer the patient for their benefit. This however can be seen as cruel by the patient or as the doctor abandoning them. In the case with the patient in 4.48 Psychosis, sometimes doctors say too much to their patients, general feelings come out that are taken personally and the hurt can never really be healed. A bit ironic when the person who is supposed to do the healing is the one that ends up hurting you.
     In the end though it is too much for her, and through an extravagant amount of medication she dies in her own poetry. Some initially felt like that this play was a suicide note to Sarah Kane’s own death. Wether or not this last work of Kane’s was her personal statement to the world or simply another work of genius is still up to debate.


1. How was the use of poetry effective in the writing of this play?

2. Did the format of the writing have any affect on the flow of the script?

3. Is there significance behind only being sane for an hour and twelve minutes in a day?

4. The doctor kept bringing up that the patient had lots of friends. How is this significant?

5. The Doctor/patient relationship can often be a strained relationship, how could the thought of betrayal impact patients?

6. What kind of effect do you think doctors’ repeated questions have on the patient?

7. What is the significance of 4:48AM?

8. The patient keeps referring to a woman who is her unknown love, someone she has never met. Is it possible this has significance, or is simply the ravings of an insane person?

9. There is a section that depicts the medical notes of the doctor. Is this indicative of actual patient care in today’s society?

10. It is common amongst severely depressed persons to have the view that to feel pain is better to feel nothing at all, or that physical pain is more easily dealt with than physical pain. How is this apparent throughout the play and does it have any grounds to be true?

"How I Learned to Drive" by Paula Vogel - Sofia Hurtado

How I Learned to Drive was written by Paula Vogel and premiered March 16^th, 1997 at the Vineyard Theatre in New York City. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this play in 1998. Other awards that it won include, the Drama Desk Award, the Obie Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award.

Paula Vogel was born in Washington D.C. on November 16, 1951.  She attended Cornell University and taught Women Studies and Theatre Arts there as well during the mid-1970s. She was fired from Cornell in 1982 for political reasons. At Brown University, Vogel was the head of the graduate playwriting program and created a center of educational theatre known as the Brown/Trinity Repertory Company. She later became Trinity’s artistic director in 2002. She currently works at Yale School of Drama as a professor and serves as the Chair of the playwriting program. Vogel has been a playwright for over 40 years, gaining national attention with The Baltimore Waltz, which won the Obie Award for Best Play in 1992. The Baltimore Waltz deals with the AIDS crisis, which personally affected Vogel as she lost her brother Carl to the disease in 1988. It is a common characteristic of Vogel’s style to have her writing reflect what has made an emotional impact on her life.  She also uses the emotions of the characters as the basis of her plays working up to plot and structure afterwards. Some of her other work includes Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief, The Oldest Profession, And Baby Makes Seven, Hot ‘N Throbbing, and The Mineola Twins.

How I Learned to Drive deals with the themes of incest, pedophilia and misogyny through the 7 year relationship between a teenage Lil’ Bit and her older uncle-by-marriage, Peck. The play begins with a grown up Lil’ Bit looking back at her relationship with Uncle Peck with anachronistic memories from the time she was 11 to 18 years of age. All the while there are educational driving messages being delivered, at times from the Greek Chorus, who also play all other roles in Lil’ Bit’s story. When the play premiered Mary-Louis Parker played Lil’ Bit and David Morse played Peck. The most recent version of the play was performed in 2012 on the Second Stage Theatre in New York City making it 15 years since the last professional production. The cast consisted of Elizabeth Reaser as Lil’ Bit and Norbert Leo Butz as Peck. How I Learned to Drive received great reviews each time.

1.     A note in the script says Uncle Peck should be cast with someone fit to play Atticus from To Kill A Mockingbird. Why do you believe this is important to state? What would having that type of character accomplish?

2.     Why do you think Vogel chose to have memories be anachronistic? What is the benefit of that? How would it differ from having told the story in chronological order?

3.     What do you think was the basis for Uncle Peck’s affectionate relationship with Lil Bit, love or lust?

4.     What is the purpose of having the Greek Chorus and why do you think the playwright reverted back to that method?

5.     Do you believe Lil Bit ever instigates Uncle Peck’s behavior towards her?

6.     What is the purpose of having the educational driving messages between the scenes? What kind of feeling does that create?

7.     Aunt Mary admits that she knows something is going on between Uncle Peck and Lil Bit. What does this say about the family? Was this a surprising revelation?

8.     Lil Bit asks Uncle Peck in the hotel room on pg. 86 “Who did this to you Uncle Peck. How old where you?” This suggests that Uncle Peck may have had a similar relationship in his adolescences. Does that seem feasible? How would it change your perspective of Uncle Peck?

9.     The grandmother holds the mother responsible and she in turn hold Lil’ Bit responsible for their mistakes with men at a young age. Is this reasonable? Are they passing off guilt? What does it say about the women in this world?

10. What does the car symbolize to Lil Bit? Why do you believe that she decides to keep its gender a woman?

Pounding Nails In The Floor With My Forehead

Eric Bogosiam was born April 24, 1953 in Woburn Massachusetts. He started out as a performer in theatre, but is most famous for his play Talk Radio, and 1988, it was made into a movie. he graduated from Oberlin College located in Ohio, and then moved to New York. When writing his plays, he focused on social realism and dark comedy. Acting in the screen play Born in Flames was where he made his first appearance on-screen. it was a documentary that addressed sexism and was made in 1983. Shows Bogosian acted in consisted of: Special Effects, Miami Vice, and Arena Brains. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Talk Radio. He became very popular for his role of Satan in The Last Days of Judas Iscariot. He also recieved the Berlin Film Festival Silver Bear Award. Between 1980 and 2000, he performed six solo performances Off-Boadway which he won three Obie Awards for. These plays were: Men Inside; Fun House; Drinking in America; Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll; Pounding Nails In The Floor With my Forehead; and Wake Up And Smell The Coffee. Bogosian also stared in Law and Order: Criminal Intent on NBC.

Pounding Nails In The Floor With My Forehead is a one-man show. A one-man show is obviously a solo theatre piece that is meant to show the abilities of a single performer. These shows are designed to fully explore characters. This type of theatre originated in the 18th Century. Solo entertainers would perform one-man shows that featured songs, sketches and impersonations. Now solo performers also use the style of a one man show to investigate controversal cultural events. Some shows can be personal and autobiographical. Others can be central themed.

Pounding Nails In The Floor With My Forehead premiered January, 1994 at the Minetta Cane Theatre in New York City.

1. In America, who is the man with him in his nightmare, and where are they?

2.What message does Bogosian try to get across in The Messenger?

3. What does the man do at the end of Blow Me?

4. What is the setting in Art?

5. Name three people that reappear thorought this solo performance.

6. What is the last line of the play?

7. Which piece did you think was the strongest? Explain.

8. Which piece spoke to you the most and why?

Into the Woods

Stephen Sondheim was born March 22, 1930 in New York City. He has won 8 Grammy awards, 8 Tony awards, 7 Drama Desk Awards, 1 OBIE Award, and 6 Lawrence Olivier Awards. His interest in theatre stemmed from the first Broadway musical he saw when he was nine years old, Very Warm for May. His father abandoned him and his mother when he was ten years old. After that, his relationship with his mother was very rocky. During his childhood, Sondheim befriended James Hammerstein, son of Oscar Hammerstein II. Oscar Hammerstein II had a great influence on Sondheim and helped to grow his love of musical theatre. After an apprenticeship with Hammerstein in which Sondheim wrote four musicals, Sondheim’s career got off to a rocky start. His big break came a few years later when he was twenty-five. Sondheim was hired to write the lyrics for West Side Story in 1957. It was a huge hit, and Sondheim’s career took off. In the next thirty years, Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Gypsy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, and Sunday in the Park with George just to name a few. In 1986, Stephen Sondheim wrote Into The Woods and was awarded a Tony Award, Grammy Award, and a Drama Desk Award for his work on the production. After Into the Woods, Sondheim wrote Assassins, Passion, Bounce, Frogs, and Road Show. In 2008, he was awarded a Special Tony Award for his lifetime achievement in theatre.

James Lapine was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio on January 10, 1949. He graduated in 1971 from Franklin and Marshall College and went on to do graduate work at the California Institute of the Arts where he studied photography and graphic design. After he finished his education, he went on to teach design at the Yale School of Drama. While teaching, he wrote off-Broadway plays and musicals. In 1981, he collaborated with composer William Finn on March of the Falsettos. He was introduced to Stephen Sondheim in 1981. They worked together on Sunday in the Park with George in which Lapine wrote the book and directed while Sondheim wrote the music. Their next collaboration was Into the Woods, which earned Lapine a Tony and Drama Desk Award for Best Book of a Musical. They worked together again on the musical Passion. Passion was nominated for multiple awards and won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical. In 1992, Lapine began working with William Finn again. They wrote Falsettos, New Brain, and The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Lapine has won 5 Drama Desk Awards, 3 Tony Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2010, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim and book written by James Lapine. It was inspired by The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and importance of Fairy Tales written by Bruno Bettelheim. Into the Woods made its stage debut in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and it opened on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on November 5, 1987. It closed after 764 performances on September 3, 1989.  The original cast included Bernadette Peters and Joanna Gleason who won a Tony Award for her performance. The musical has been produced many, many times both at professional and amateur levels. There is even a bood for the junior version of the show. Since it originally opened on Broadway, there has been a national tour, an opening on the West End, a revival on the West End, a Broadway revival, a London revival, and a movie. Into the Woods won Tony Awards for Best Score, Best Book and Best Revival, a Drama Desk Award for Best Musical, and a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival.

The play follows the lives of a handful of Brothers Grimm fairy tale characters and how their journeys intertwine when they go into the woods. The audience finally gets an answer to the question, “What happens after happily ever after?” The baker and his wife wish to have a child. Cinderella wishes to go to the King’s festival, and Jack wishes his cow would give them milk. They all go into the woods to get what they want, and eventually, everyone’s wish is granted. The characters quickly learn that they should be careful.

The show is a dark comedy about what happens when life doesn’t turn out to be as happily ever after as expected. It comments on morality, growing up, parent-children relationships, and the consequences of getting exactly what you want. Through the course of the play, the characters learn to be less selfish and more compassionate towards others. At the start, all they care about is their wishes being granted, but by the end, they really care about each other and become much more selfless.

1.     In most productions, the same actors play Mysterious Man and the narrator, Cinderella’s prince and the wolf, and Granny and Cinderella’s mother. Do you think this adds to the production or detracts from it? Why?

2.     In Act I, the wolf and Little Red Ridinghood sing “Hello Little Girl.” What do you think the theme is behind their interaction?

3.     There are a lot of characters in this show. Some reviewers have said that the stage is too crowded at most times. Do you agree? Why or why not?

4.     What do you think the witch represents in the musical?  

5.     The witch says, “I’m not good. I’m not nice. I’m just right.” What does she mean? Do you think this statement is contradictory?

6.     The witch loves Rapunzel. She keeps her locked in a tower to keep her safe from the world, which she believes to be dangerous. Do you think she is justified in her actions or is she too strict on Rapunzel?

7.     The baker and his wife are go into the woods to break the curse which will allow them to have children and start a family. What do you think about the baker’s wife’s encounter with the prince in the woods?

8.     In Act II, Jack, Baker, Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, and the witch sing “Your Fault.” The characters are in the middle of a crisis. Why is it so important for them to lay the blame on someone?

9.     In the second act, the characters sing “No One is Alone.” In the first act, all of the characters were only concerned with their own interests and wishes. How do the characters change from the first act to the part of the second act where they sing this song?

10. This play is about fairy tale characters. Even though it is completely fiction, do you find this show to be relatable to real life? 
11. First Rapunzel's prince goes blind, then the two stepsisters followed by the giant. Why do you think that blindness comes up in the play so many times?  Do you think it represents anything? 
12. To all of you people on the production side of things... What challenges do you think about when you think about staging, designing for, set dressing, costuming, etc. this show?



Bonus question: As a singer who has been playing music and singing for over 15 years, I feel that I am relatively good at reading music. However, when I did this show, the songs kicked my butt. I think this is some of the hardest music I've ever encountered to keep up with. The time signatures are out of control. I'm really interested to see if anyone else picked up on that or has any thoughts on the score itself. 

Fool For Love - Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard, born Samuel Shepard Rogers the IV in Fort Sheridan, Illinois 1943, his parents were both teachers, and his father was also a farmer who served as a bomber in WWII. He spent teenage years working on a ranch, which we can see influence being drawn on for his formation of “Cowboy”  characters.  He dropped out of college to join a traveling theater troupe

He first became involved with Off-Off-Broadway theatre (also sometimes referred to as Indie theatre) in 1962 around the age of 19.

In 1976 relocated to San Fransisco where he became resident playwright at the Magic Theatre, where

Was on the Cover of Newsweek Nov. 11, 1985 after Fool for Love had been made into a film version, A Lie of the mind was on an Off-Broadway run and he was getting steady film work.

In 2001, he was cast as General Garrison in the film Black Hawk Down which put him back in public spotlight.

Joseph Chaikin, director, playwright & founder of a group called “Open Theatre”  is a noted major influence on Sheppard's works, the two having closely worked together writing plays Savage/Love & Tongues.

Notable awards include Pulitzer prize for Drama for Buried Child (1979),  Academy award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1984),   Nominated for Best play Tony for Buried child (1996) & True West (2000). Won Multiple Obie awards (10) for Playwriting, new plays, Direction and more, across multiple works (12) from 1966-1984 (18 years).

Critics consider Fool for Love part of the ending portion of a quintet of plays written across 1978 to 1985, alongside A Lie of The Mind - in addition to what is referred to as The Family Trilogy, which includes True West,Curse of The Starving Class & Buried Child

Fool for Love written 1984, follows a lovers spat in an Arizonan hotel, as their outside dates/affairs get involved, when soon their relationship is revealed to be incestuous all the while living under the shadow of their same father.  

For me to address a play in which “Love” is such a central theme, I must first address my own stance and interpretation of love. Some of those among you may already know that I, as a person, do not believe in “Love” as a concept. That is to say that I believe that we do not come up with our own model of love as individuals. We are given one by circumstances we experience at a young age, primarily from two sources; the media we are exposed to, where we get storybook and Disney versions of love, and from our parents, which is often the biggest example of love we will ever be exposed to. And we do not get a new model of Love until we have to remold, rebuild, or repair a new idea of love after our old one is broken by our own contradictory life experiences. Often we may find - whether or not we realize, that this will again fall into the same model as our parent’s model of love, minus any degree of youthful censorship. We become our parents, & that which we do not become, we attract or are attracted-to.

I find this is also the case in Sam Sheppard’s Fool For Love where we can find a great deal of Eddie & May’s actions mirroring the relationship dynamic of their father’s & respective mother’s actions.

First off, in regards to their shared father: They both effectively take the same course of action, or at the very least they try to. This is in the sense they both attempt to follow the pattern of leaving their lover and eventually returning in a cycle mirroring their father’s actions. I use the word attempt in reference to May’s attempt to leave, which we observe during the course of the play, as potentially being the only time she turns away from, instead of accepting Eddie’s love. All the while we receive reference of Eddie’s history being more directly akin to their father’s and him being more successful in this pattern of leaving and returning his lover. We are even witness to Their Old Man attempting to make direct connection to Eddie when arguing against May.

As for their Mothers I find that the Woman in the Black Mercedes-Benz referred to as The Countess, plays a representative role of their mothers. For example, May’s mother followed their father to an insane degree, sneaking into yards, peering into homes, with a daughter being dragged in-tow. The Countess we might assume has been lead to the hotel by Eddie, who has claimed to have traveled thousands of miles to reach here. As for Eddie’s mother, The Countess is willing to fight for her man. Violently. As in, with a fucking gun. Just like Eddie’s mom.

• Do you believe Eddie's claims of traveling thousands of miles were truthful?
•   How do you define/ find the difference between a “Man” and a “Guy”?
• What is a "Fantasist" in context of the play? Out of it? And compared to realism in/out of context?
• Who is Barbara Mandrell? (The woman the Old Man claims to be in the non existent portrait.) How might she relate to the two Character's mother's?
• Who do you believe the Countess to be? What were her motives on being at the Hotel? Where was she/what did she do during the period of time between her two assaults?
•  At the end of the play where do you believe Eddie went Did he leave with the woman in the car? Did he walk off like his father once did? Was he about to come back?
•     Is this May’s first time not taking Eddie back?
•    Does Eddie have multiple lovers? Just the one? Does he leave for affairs, or does he seek more legitimate reasons for leaving?    
• What parallels can we draw between Eddie & Lee?