Theater
Shores' second play Daddy's Dyin': Who's Got the Will?, debuted in Los Angeles at Theatre/Theater on February 7, 1987. [9] The production received positive reviews and ran for two years. [10] On May 20, 1993, the final play in the his Lowake trilogy set, Daughters of the Lone Star State premiered at the Zephyr Theatre under the direction of Ron Link. [11] Variety described the production as a "an unflinching, if somewhat unfocused, look at the racial and social tensions so prevalent in modern-day America". [12]
Shores wrote and directed a fourth play, Sordid Lives, a comedy inspired by his own family that revolves around the eccentric Ingram family in Texas while incorporating LGBTQ themes. [13] The play premiered in Los Angeles on May 11, 1996, and ran for 13 months. [14] At the time, Shores was going through a divorce and described Sordid Lives as his "coming out play". [6] The production received positive reviews, earning 14 Drama-Logue Awards and 13 Critic's Choice honors. [15]
Shores' play Southern Baptist Sissies premiered at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles in September 2000, running for ten months and returning in 2001. [16] The production earned a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theater [17] It was revived in April 2002 for another six-month run and later played at the Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in Chicago in July 2002 to positive reviews [18] He then wrote and directed The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, a more dramatic play than his previous comedies, which debuted in 2003 at the Zephyr Theatre in Los Angeles. [19] The play won NAACP Theatre Awards for Best Playwright/Playwright Adaptation/Best Production [20] In 2012, Shores adapted it into the film Blues for Willadean , starring Octavia Spencer and Beth Grant. [21]
In 2006, Shores revived three of his plays—Sordid Lives, Southern Baptist Sissies, The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife—at the Zephyr Theatre. [22] That same year, he received a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. [23] Shores returned to theater in April 2010 with Yellow, performed at The Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood. [24] In 2018, he wrote and performed Six Characters in Search of a Play, followed by the premiere of his ninth play, This Side of Crazy, at the New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco in 2019. [25] [26] The stage version of A Very Sordid Wedding played in 2021. [27]
Film
While Daddy's Dyin': Who's Got the Will? was still playing, Shores wrote a screenplay for a film version, starring. His manager invited director Jack Fisk and his wife, actress Sissy Spacek, to see the play. Fisk, who had an existing deal with Propaganda Films, took an interest in directing the adaptation, and the company agreed to produce the film using Shores' screenplay. [6] The film adaptation was released in 1990 by MGM. [9] [31] Around this time, Shores also signed a deal with Warner Brothers. [6] After writing the script Sordid Lives in 1999, he created his own independent company to fund and produce. [32] The film premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival on February 4, 2000, [33] and was given an eight-theater limited run from May 11, 2001, to April 20, 2003, grossing a total of $1.1 million. [34] [35] In 2013, Shores wrote, produced and directed a film adaptation of Southern Baptist Sissies . [36] Shores wrote, produced, and directed A Very Sordid Wedding , a sequel film in the Sordid Lives series, which was released in 2017. [37]
