Red Shuttleworth is one of the finest poets of the American West, past, present, and future. Some of us also know him as one of the finest, imaginative living playwrights writing for a challenged American theatre. In Shuttleworth’s daring and galvanizing, dark tragi-comedy, High Plains Fandango, he offers a perceptive and prophetic account of romance, life, and danger on the High Plains of Nebraska, a possible epicenter of our water-scarcity future. High Plains Fandango lives through brilliant language, complex characters, arresting storytelling, and all-too meaningful themes. Viva Red Shuttleworth! – Dr. Jerry L. Crawford, Dean Emeritus, The College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. Red Shuttleworth is the most urgent playwright I know. His language is taut, unencumbered with extraneous flourishes. His characters are direct; they take decisive action without regard for the consequences. His themes hit on contemporary issues, and hit hard. He has a great love for the neglected and downtrodden whose lives are being crushed from the outside. That’s why I commissioned Red Shuttleworth’s High Plains Fandango, so that my audiences could feel this urgency like a hoof to the mouth. – Tom Loughlin, Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance, State University of New York at Fredonia High Plains Fandango, described as a tragi-comedy by Dr. Jerry L. Crawford, Dean Emeritus, The College of Fellows of the American Theatre, Kennedy Center, and inspired by water scarcity being the world’s most critical future security issue, depicts the inhabitants of one small Nebraska town’s Faustian bargain amidst the impending business interests of attempted water privatization of the Ogallala aquifer. The State University of New York at Fredonia premiered the first production of High Plains Fandango on Friday, February 24, 2012
