The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard

Few American playwrights have exerted as much influence on the contemporary stage as Sam Shepard. His plays are performed on and off Broadway and in all the major regional American theatres. They are also widely performed and studied in Europe, particularly in Britain, Germany and France, finding both a popular and scholarly audience. In this collection of seventeen original essays, American and European authors from different professional and academic backgrounds explore the various aspects of Shepard’s career - his plays, poetry, music, fiction, acting, directing and film work. The volume covers the major plays, including Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, and True West, as well as other lesser known but vitally important works. A thorough chronology of Shepard’s life and career, together with biographical chapters, a note from the legendary Joseph Chaikin, and an interview with the playwright, give a fascinating first-hand account of an exuberant and experimental personality.

• Contains first-hand accounts, e.g. interview with Shepard and piece by Shepard’s long-term collaborator, Joe Chaikin • Contributors from England, Scotland and Belgium as well as USA • The first scholarly essay on Shepard’s most recent play, The Late Henry Moss

Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Introduction Matthew Roudané; 1. Born injured: the theatre of Sam Shepard Christopher Bigsby; 2. Shepard and Off-Off Broadway: the unseen hand of Theatre Genesis Stephen J. Bottoms; 3. Shepard on Shepard: an interview Matthew Roudané; 4. On Sam Shepard Joseph Chaikin; 5. Joseph Chaikin and Sam Shepard in Collaboration Marc Robinson; 6. Repetition and regression in Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child Thomas P. Adler; 7. Shepard writes about writing Brenda Murphy; 8. Reflections of the past in True West and A Lie of the Mind Leslie Kane; 9. Patriarchal pathology from The Holy Ghostly to Silent Tongue Carla J. McDonough; 10. The classic Western and Sam Shepard’s family sagas John Clum; 11. European textures: adapting Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus Johan Callens; 12. Sam Shepard and the cinema Kimball King; 13. Sam Shepard as musical experimenter David DeRose; 14. Sam Shepard’s non-dramatic writings Ann C. Hall; 15. States of Shock, Simpatico, and Eyes for Consuela: Sam Shepard’s plays of the 1990s Leslie Wade; 16. Sam Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss Matthew Roudané; 17. Sam Shepard: a bibliographic essay and production overview Susan Abbotson; Index.

‘… Matthew Roudané gathers an impressive array of American drama\'s A-team scholars … he is a knowledgeable, sensitive, sensible, and thorough scholar … Roudané\'s collection is the best book-length study of Shepard [and] is the best collection of scholarly essays on [American] drama this year.’ James J. Martine, Drama