Sam Shepard Popular Books

Sam Shepard Biography & Facts

Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation."Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved from the absurdism of his early off-off-Broadway work to the realism of later plays like Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class. Early life Sam Shepard was born on November 5, 1943, in the Chicago suburb of Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He was named Samuel Shepard Rogers III after his father, Samuel Shepard Rogers Jr. (1917–1984), but was called Steve Rogers.His father was a teacher and farmer who served in the United States Army Air Forces as a bomber pilot during World War II. Shepard characterized his father as "a drinking man, a dedicated alcoholic". His mother, Jane Elaine (née Schook; 1917–1994), was a teacher and a native of Chicago.Shepard grew up in southern California. He worked on a ranch as a teenager. After graduating from Duarte High School in Duarte, California, in 1961, he briefly studied animal husbandry at nearby Mt. San Antonio College. While at college, Shepard became enamored of Samuel Beckett, jazz, and abstract expressionism. He dropped out to join the Bishop's Company, a touring repertory group. Career Writing Shepard moved to New York City in 1963 and found work as a busboy at the Village Gate nightclub. The following year, the Village Gate's head waiter, Ralph Cook, founded the experimental stage company Theater Genesis, housed at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in Manhattan. Two of Shepard's earliest one-act plays, The Rock Garden and Cowboys, debuted at Theater Genesis in October 1964. It was around this time that he adopted the professional name Sam Shepard.In 1965, Shepard's one-act plays Dog and The Rocking Chair were produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. These were the first of many productions of Shepard's work at La MaMa during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 1967, Tom O'Horgan directed Shepard's Melodrama Play alongside Leonard Melfi's Times Square and Rochelle Owens' Futz at La MaMa. In 1969, Jeff Bleckner directed Shepard's play The Unseen Hand at La MaMa. Bleckner then directed The Unseen Hand alongside Forensic and the Navigators at the nearby Astor Place Theatre in 1970.Shepard's play Shaved Splits was directed at La MaMa in 1970 by Bill Hart. Seth Allen directed Melodrama Play at La MaMa the following year. In 1981, Tony Barsha directed The Unseen Hand at La MaMa. The production then transferred to the Provincetown Playhouse and ran for over 100 performances. Syracuse Stage co-produced The Tooth of Crime at La MaMa in 1983. Also in 1983, the Overtone Theatre and New Writers at the Westside co-produced Shepard's plays Superstitions and The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife at La MaMa. John Densmore performed in his own play Skins and Shepard and Joseph Chaikin's play Tongues, directed as a double bill by Tony Abatemarco, at La MaMa in 1984. Nicholas Swyrydenko directed a production of Geography of a Horse Dreamer at La MaMa in 1985.Several of Shepard's early plays, including Red Cross (1966) and La Turista (1967), were directed by Jacques Levy. A patron of the Chelsea Hotel scene, he also contributed to Kenneth Tynan's Oh! Calcutta! (1969) and drummed sporadically from 1967 through 1971 with the band The Holy Modal Rounders, appearing on their albums Indian War Whoop (1967) and The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders (1968). After winning six Obie Awards between 1966 and 1968, Shepard emerged as a screenwriter with Robert Frank's Me and My Brother (1968) and Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970). Cowboy Mouth, a collaboration with his then-lover Patti Smith, was staged at The American Place Theatre in April 1971, providing early exposure for Smith, who would become a well-known musician. The story and characters in Cowboy Mouth were inspired by Shepard and Smith's relationship. After opening night, he abandoned the production and fled to New England without a word to anyone involved.Shortly thereafter, Shepard relocated with his wife and son to London. While in London, he immersed himself in the study of G.I. Gurdjieff's Fourth Way, a recurring preoccupation for much of his life. Returning to the United States in 1975, he moved to the 20-acre Flying Y Ranch in Mill Valley, California, where he raised a young colt named Drum and rode double with his young son on an appaloosa named Cody. Shepard continued to write plays and served for a semester as Regents' Professor of Drama at the University of California, Davis. Shepard accompanied Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue of 1975 as the screenwriter for Renaldo and Clara that emerged from the tour. However, because much of the film was improvised, Shepard's work was seldom used. Rolling Thunder Logbook, his diary of the tour, was published in 1978. A decade later, Dylan and Shepard co-wrote the 11-minute song "Brownsville Girl", included on Dylan's 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded and on later compilations. In 1975, Shepard was named playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where he created many of his notable works, including his Family Trilogy. One of the plays in the trilogy, Buried Child (1978), won the Pulitzer Prize, and was nominated for five Tony Awards. This marked a major turning point in his career, heralding some of his best-known work, including True West (1980), Fool for Love (1983), and A Lie of the Mind (1985). A comic tale of reunion, in which a young man drops in on his grandfather's Illinois farmstead only to be greeted with indifference by his relations, Buried Child saw Shepard stake a claim to the psychological terrain of classic American theater. True West and Fool for Love were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Some critics have expanded the trilogy to a quintet, including Fool for Love and A Lie of the Mind. Shepard won a record-setting ten Obie Awards for writing and directing between 1966 and 1984. In 2010, A Lie of the Mind was revived in New York at the same time as Shepard's new play Ages of the Moon opened there. Reflecting on the two plays, Shepard said that the older play felt "awkward", adding, "All of the characters are in a fractured place, broken into pieces, and the pieces don't really.... Discover the Sam Shepard popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sam Shepard books.

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  • El teatro de Sam Shepard en el Nueva York de los sesenta synopsis, comments

    El teatro de Sam Shepard en el Nueva York de los sesenta

    Ana Fernández-Caparrós

    Sam Shepard (1943) llegó a la ciudad de Nueva York en 1963, en un período de intensa experimentación y renovación de las artes escénicas. Tras estrenar sus primeras piezas teatrale...

  • Spencer Tracy Is Not Dead synopsis, comments

    Spencer Tracy Is Not Dead

    Sam Shepard

    A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection   The ride to the tiny village in Mexico where he’s due to film has not been easy. The actor has to first put up with Gunther, a...

  • Buried Child synopsis, comments

    Buried Child

    Sam Shepard

    A newly revised edition of an American classic, Sam Shepard’s Pulitzer Prizewinning Buried Child is as fierce and unforgettable as it was when it was first produced in 1978.A ...

  • Two Prospectors synopsis, comments

    Two Prospectors

    Sam Shepard & Johnny Dark

    This collection shares decades of correspondence between the Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright and one of his closest friendsincluding personal photos.One of America’s leading drama...

  • Simpatico synopsis, comments

    Simpatico

    Sam Shepard

    Set within the netherworld of thoroughbred racing, this hairraisingly funny new play by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of True West explores the classical themes of memory, loyal...

  • Heartless synopsis, comments

    Heartless

    Sam Shepard

    When Roscoe, a 65yearold Cervantes scholar, runs off with a young woman named Sally, he decides to stay a while in her family home. Soon he discovers that Sally’s houseonce inhabit...

  • The Late Work of Sam Shepard synopsis, comments

    The Late Work of Sam Shepard

    Shannon Blake Skelton

    Hailed by critics during the 1980s as the decade's 'Great American Playwright', Sam Shepard continued to produce work in a wide array of media including short prose, fi...

  • Sam Shepard synopsis, comments

    Sam Shepard

    John J. Winters

    “John Winters offers a master class in literary sleuthing, untangling the many lives and unearthing the origin story of America’s foremost Renaissance man of letters.” Kelly Horan,...

  • Spy of the First Person synopsis, comments

    Spy of the First Person

    Sam Shepard

    The final work from the Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, actor, and musician, drawn from his transformative last days   In searing, beautiful prose, Sam Shepard’s extraordinary ...

  • Two Prospectors synopsis, comments

    Two Prospectors

    Sam Shepard & Johnny Dark

    Sam Shepard was arguably America’s finest working dramatist, as well as an accomplished screenwriter, actor, and director. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, he wrote more than fortyfive ...

  • Tooth of Crime synopsis, comments

    Tooth of Crime

    Sam Shepard

    One of the plays that first announced Sam Shepard as an original voice in American theater, Tooth of Crime is his thrillingly innovative rock drama, published here in a revised edi...

  • Drehtage synopsis, comments

    Drehtage

    Sam Shepard

    Tijuana, Yucatán, der Grand Canyon oder Wounded Knee: nur einige der Orte, die Sam Shepard in »Drehtage« Anlass geben, von seiner Vision des amerikanischen Westens zu erzählen. Kur...

  • Fifteen One-Act Plays synopsis, comments

    Fifteen One-Act Plays

    Sam Shepard

    Filled with wry, dark humor, unparalleled imagination, unforgettable characters, and exquisitely crafted storytelling, Sam Shepard’s plays have earned him enormous acclaim over the...

  • The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard synopsis, comments

    The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard

    Matthew Roudané

    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...

  • True West synopsis, comments

    True West

    Robert Greenfield

    NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A revelatory biography of the worldfamous playwright and actor Sam Shepard, whose work was matched by his equally dramatic life, including collabora...

  • The Late Henry Moss, Eyes for Consuela, When the World Was Green synopsis, comments

    The Late Henry Moss, Eyes for Consuela, When the World Was Green

    Sam Shepard

    These three plays by Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard are bold, explosive, and ultimately redemptive dramas propelled by family secrets and illuminated by a searching intelligence...

  • Sam Shepard V8 Pt 3 synopsis, comments

    Sam Shepard V8 Pt 3

    Johan Callens

    These issues consist of the edited Proceedings of the Shepard conference, organized by the BelgianLuxembourg American Studies Association and the Free University of Brussels (VUB),...

  • Sam Shepard V8 Pt 4 synopsis, comments

    Sam Shepard V8 Pt 4

    Johan Callens

    This volume, the second of two, contains the proceedings of the Shepard conference organized in Brussels, 2830 May 1993, by the BelgianLuxembourg American Studies Association and t...

  • The One Inside synopsis, comments

    The One Inside

    Sam Shepard

    The first work of long fiction from the Pulitzer Prizewinning playwrighta tour de force of memory, mystery, death, and life.   This searing, extraordinarily evocative narrativ...

  • Kicking a Dead Horse synopsis, comments

    Kicking a Dead Horse

    Sam Shepard

    A solitary man digs a hole in the ground, near a dead horse. Amidst the clutter of food and equipment stands Hobart Struther, who has ridden all the way out to the middle of nowher...

  • The Unseen Hand synopsis, comments

    The Unseen Hand

    Sam Shepard

    The complete scripts to six Sam Shepard plays: The Unseen Hand, Forensic and the Navigators, The Holy Ghostly, Back Bog Beast Bait, Shaved Splits, 4H Club.

  • A Particle of Dread synopsis, comments

    A Particle of Dread

    Sam Shepard

    In A Particle of Dread, Sam Shepard takes one of the most famous plays in historyOedipus Rexand transforms it into a modern American classic. In this telling, Oedipus, King of Theb...

  • Understanding Sam Shepard synopsis, comments

    Understanding Sam Shepard

    James A. Crank

    An ideal introduction into the complex and compelling dramas of the acclaimed playwright Understanding Sam Shepard investigates the notoriously complex and confusing dramatic world...

  • The God of Hell synopsis, comments

    The God of Hell

    Sam Shepard

    Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard’s latest play is an uproarious, brilliantly provocative farce that brings the gifts of a quintessentially American playwright to bear on the curre...