Bruised Love: Two Red Shuttleworth Free Verse Plays

Bruised Love

Two Free Verse Plays 

of the Contemporary American West

(They Dream Ghost Riders

and

Heart 'n Saddle Saloon)

by

Red Shuttleworth

Bruised Love was co-produced on September 19, 1992 in Fallon, Nevada, by the Theatre Arts Department of University of Nevada, Las Vegas and by the Churchill Arts Council.  Both plays were directed by Michael Lugering.  This traveling production of Bruised Love was sponsored in part by the Nevada State Council on the Arts and the Sierra Arts Foundation.  One of the plays, They Dream Ghost Riders, was first produced by UNLV in 1989 when it was directed by Cathy Hurst.

They Dream Ghost Riders (cast of four women and four men), set in Northern Nebraska where farmland merges into ranch land, is a hardscrabble set of stories about love, the family farm crisis, and survival.  The Fallon 1992 cast of They Dream Ghost Riders featured:

              Helene Elin Pobst.............................Caroline 

              Charlie Paddock...............................Archer

              Nicole Sottile....................................Reata

              Josh Mussleman................................Hale

              Toni Loppnow...................................Buffy

               Larry Narlock...................................Koop

               Melissa Gilbert.................................Gwen

               Scott Twilligear................................Owen

Toni Loppnow

(Buffy in They Dream Ghost Riders)

They Dream Ghost Riders, Ensemble:

Scott Twilligear, Melissa Gilbert, Toni Loppnow, Charlie Paddock,

Helene Elin Pobst, Larry Narlock, Josh Mussleman, and Nicole Sottile

Heart 'n Saddle Saloon (cast of two women and two men) carries the pain of cowtown love and betrayal... the hope of getting it all back together again.  The Fallon cast featured:

                Nicole Sottile..................................Roxie

                Scott Twilligear...............................Oates

                Toni Loppnow.................................Marilena

                 Josh Mussleman..............................Patrick

Toni Loppnow and Scott Twilligear

in Heart 'n Saddle Saloon

Heart 'n Saddle Saloon cast:

Scott Twilligear, Nicole Sottile, Toni Loppnow, and Josh Mussleman

Nicole Sottlie

(Roxie in Heart 'n Saddle Saloon)

 The scripts for the two verse plays of Bruised Love are no longer available.