Everyone seems to understand a piece of Sam Shepard--macho movie actor, off-Broadway revolutionary, reclusive horse breeder, Dean of American Playwrights--but assembling these personas into a coherent individual would daunt the bravest of biographers. Leslie A. Wade, a University of Louisiana associate theater professor, strives to chart Shepard's obsessions and writing phases and to put them in context, both with Shepard's personal life and with the America he supposedly embodies. Wade's dry style sometimes poorly serves the passionate subject matter, but he provides new Shepard fans with perspective and plot summaries that are superior to all previous efforts. The full-blooded Shepard biography is still waiting to be written, but this vigorous attempt may well serve as its outline.


Review
Wade presents Shephard's career carefully and considers it in connection with the political, artistic, and social events of the period from the sixties to the 1990s. The author thus provides a good pictures of the development of Off- and Off-Off-broadway theater, the work of such artists as Schechner and Chaikin, the development of new forms of funding for the arts, and the decline of Broadway theater.... Like the other titles in the series, this volume contributes to the fuller understanding of the theater of past and present. All academic collectionsChoice


Book Description
No dramatist in the recent history of the American theatre has gained more celebrity than Sam Shepard. Exploring a career that includes fifty stage and screen plays, four books of nondramatic writings, and over a dozen appearances in feature films, this work traces Shepard's rise from an Off-Off Broadway renegade to a Hollywood leading man, and explores his evolution from counterculture to cultural icon. The study situates Shepard's career within the shifting production modes and economic contexts of the American entertainment industry, and views his popularity against the identity politics of postwar American culture. Through an analysis of his life, plays, and screen roles, this book investigates how Shepard's dramatic voice and film persona address issues of American consensus and community. The study argues that Shepard's popularity--in an era of cultural diversification and dissent--owes much to nationalism and nostalgia and begs important questions concerning American myths, media representations, and the construction of an American audience.


About the Author
LESLIE A. WADE is Associate Professor of Theatre at Louisiana State University.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

No dramatist in the recent history of the American theatre has gained more celebrity than Sam Shepard. Exploring a career that includes fifty stage and screen plays, four books of nondramatic writings, and over a dozen appearances in feature films, this work traces Shepard's rise from an Off-Off Broadway renegade to a Hollywood leading man, and explores his evolution from counterculture to cultural icon. The study situates Shepard's career within the shifting production modes and economic contexts of the American entertainment industry, and views his popularity against the identity politics of postwar American culture. Through an analysis of his life, plays, and screen roles, this book investigates how Shepard's dramatic voice and film persona address issues of American consensus and community. The study argues that Shepard's popularity--in an era of cultural diversification and dissent--owes much to nationalism and nostalgia and begs important questions concerning American myths, media representations, and the construction of an American audience.

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