John Guare. (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Riff Raff, set in New York City’s Lower East Side, begins with the unraveling of a drug deal and settles into the dance of nerves and personal agendas that follows in its aftermath. Two half-brothers, “20/20” Mike Leon (played in this production by Frank Harts) and Billy “Torch” Murphy (played by Wayne Scott), ride out a clash of personalities, ambitions, and memories, cobbling together a scheme to escape the seedy hideout where they have been joined by Tony “The Tiger” Lee (played by Daniel Breaker)—their only apparent hope for rescue from the trouble waiting for them on the street literally below their window.

At the root of his desire to write Riff Raff, Laurence Fishburne has said he was searching for an “exorcism” of personal demons—in the case of this play, the demons of his youth. Fishburne, who was only 14 when he got to play the soldier Clean in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 epic Apocalypse Now, is respected for his intense performances on stage and screen. His roles have ranged from August Wilson on Broadway to the film The Matrix. What many fans may not realize is that Fishburne, now 40, has also had an abiding interest in writing for the theater. Riff Raff first came to life in Los Angeles in 1994 at Theatre GEO. Fishburne directed himself in that production: a labor of love he repeated the following year at Circle Repertory Theatre in New York City. At that time, Fishburne observed that, in writing the play, he sought “to create a very intense exercise for [the] actor.” Indeed, the intensity of Riff Raff—its psychology, its language, and the motivations of its characters—contributes to its particular theatrical electricity.

Riff Raff will be directed by Regge Life, an accomplished director of theater around the country, as well as film and television. Life has directed for The Cosby Show, A Different World and, most recently, the acclaimed production of Living in the Wind at American Place Theater in New York. In conversation, Life mentioned his deep appreciation “for the language and the rhythms of the play—it’s like music. It’s at the heart of the play’s power and very much what drew me to it: the charge to hear that music and bring it to life.” Mr. Life said he looks forward to unlocking the power of the play with the actors, orchestrating and building a production from their “personal rhythms.” “The whole collaboration between text and design and performance should make for a compelling evening of theater,” he said.

Equally compelling and theatrical as Riff Raff, if more fantastic in construction, is John Guare’s early play Landscape of the Body, an often-produced favorite for years. Guare, in addition to being one of the most important playwrights in America, has a special connection to Juilliard’s Drama Division. In 1992, at Division Director Michael Kahn’s invitation, he assumed leadership (with Terrence McNally) the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program, currently co-directed by Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang. But Landscape of the Body began its life 15 years prior to Guare’s involvement with young playwrights at Juilliard. Its first production was in Lake Forest, Illinois, and its New York premiere occurred in the fall of 1977 at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Both productions were directed by John Pasquin and featured Shirley Knight and F. Murray Abraham in lead roles. Guare also wrote the music and song lyrics for the play.

The action of Landscape of the Body begins on a ferry bound for Nantucket. A woman named Betty (played in Juilliard’s production by Sarah Wilson) is fleeing personal trouble in New York City when she’s confronted by a disguised police detective (Matt D’Amico), who is pursuing her for a confession he’s certain she will make in an unsolved murder case involving her son, Bert (Dennis Butkus). The play quickly moves back in time to tell Betty’s provocative story. Terrifying and yet irresistibly dark and funny, Betty’s world includes an exotic cast to be played by James Martinez, Nathan Baesel, Samantha Soule, Daniel Talbott, and Craig Baldwin. The characters assemble around Betty and Bert when they arrive in Greenwich Village from Bangor, Maine, to rescue Betty’s sister Rosalie (Toi Perkins) from the waywardness of big city life. Landscape of the Body goes on to communicate, in terms entirely its own—through mood and monologues and song—many of Guare’s recurring themes: the power of dreams to fuel our not-always-thrilling daily lives—from winning lotteries to settling down behind white picket fences—to the violence that can erupt when those dreams are arrested or destroyed, and the hunger that often follows to escape the world and begin fresh somewhere else.

Director Will Pomerantz, who returns to the Drama Division after last season’s production of Vaclav Havel’s The Memorandum (and, the year before that, a third-year production of Macbeth), says of this play: “While not as well known as other plays by John Guare, it is still one of my favorites: a very theatrical, dark comedy which sort of defies genre, and that’s something that always interests me.”

Landscape of the Body will be staged in the Juilliard Drama Theater. Performances begin Wednesday, September 26, and continue through Sunday, September 30. All shows begin at 8 p.m. (except for Sunday night’s performance, which is at 7 p.m., and a matinee to be performed on Saturday, September 29 at 2 p.m.).

Riff Raff will be performed in Studio 301 beginning Tuesday, September 25, and will continue through Monday, October 1. All performances of Riff Raff are at 8 p.m. Public availability of tickets is limited for Riff Raff, which is being performed in a smaller venue. They will be distributed through the Drama Office only, beginning September 11. More plentiful tickets for the public to Landscape of the Body will become available from the Juilliard Concert Office on September 12.

Joe Kraemer is literary manager and dramaturg for the Drama Division.