On Axis Music & Media has provided promotions support for “Fool for Love,” the Sam Shepard Tribute/Benefit Show. Here’s some of the press highlights:
Chicago Print Media:
Corse and McComas perform theatre, music, and literary readings together in retirement communities and for inmates studying theatre, as well as at live-music venues and cabarets. “We did an excerpt from Sam Shepard’s play ‘Fool for Love’ at one of these gigs,” says Corse. “And we both liked the play so much that we were like, ‘Why don’t we just try to do this?'” It took them about three months to put the show together. “The drama, the humor of it is relatable to anyone who has ever been in love and was with someone they couldn’t be with, or perhaps shouldn’t be with,” Corse says. “And the music is really fun!”
Chicago Television:
WGN TV-Channel 9
“Fool for Love” was featured on WGN TV-Channel 9. To see the entire 6-minute show segment (interview + song performance), click here.
For the 3-minute music performance only, see video below:
Milwaukee Print Media:
Says actor/director Paul McComas, “Fool for Love always rang true for me, and the characterizations are excellent—including the first, but far from the last, fully realized female character in Shepard’s canon. It’s a metaphor for any couple whose love is in some way forbidden … My adaptation of the play is 45 minutes long and has just two characters. The original is 80 minutes long and has four characters. I trimmed it with great care and maintained Shepard’s stage direction that it be ‘performed relentlessly without a break.’ The audience is trapped in a motel room at the edge of the Mojave Desert with this star-crossed couple.”
Riverwest Currents
Click on October 2019 issue, then scroll-right to p. 15.
In this Diamond-Jubilee (75th anniversary) year of Shepard’s birth, Fool for Love “brings up important questions related to peacemaking,” says Marquette University Center for Peacemaking Director Patrick Kennelly, “the most important being: How do individuals, especially those who’ve endured trauma through no fault of their own, continue in life without repeating cycles of violence and destructive behaviors that harmed them?”
The romanticized nature of love often leaves out the tribulations that come with it—a message that comes to life on stage in Fool for Love. Says actor/director Paul McComas, “When I was in college, I was particularly drawn to pieces that were controversial and pushed boundaries, that were edgy and alive. That’s who we are at that age … These two characters are in love but are dealing with an impossible situation thrust on them by fate. They’re both innocent; it’s not the fault of either one of them. But that doesn’t excuse them from trying to grapple with the impossible … The audience will be involved simultaneously at the level of the head and the heart. If I had to pick one over the other, I would pick an emotionally impactful play or novel, but in the case of Shephard’s work, you don’t have to pick!”
Additional Print Media
To bring the touring production to Lawrence is a particular thrill for McComas, who counts the late Fred Gaines and other Lawrence faculty as mentors who set him on a course of creative exploration that has defined his career in the arts.