Cambridge Companion To Sam Shepard, The

Description:
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.

Review:
'... Matthew Roudane gathers an impressive array of American drama's A-team scholars ... he is a knowledgeable, sensitive, sensible, and thorough scholar ... Roudane'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

Table of Contents:
Notes on contributors; Acknowledgements; Chronology; Introduction Matthew Roudane; 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 Roudane; 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 Roudane; 17. Sam Shepard: a bibliographic essay and production overview Susan Abbotson; Index.

Author Biography:
Matthew Roudane, Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, specializes in American Drama. He has published widely on recent American theater, including Understanding Edward Albee (1987), Conversations with Arthur Miller (1987), Contemporary American Dramatists (1989), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Necessary Fictions, Terrifying Realities (1990), Public Issues, Private Tensions: Contemporary American Drama (1993), Approaches to Teaching Miller's Death of a Salesman (1995), American Drama since 1960: A Critical History (1996), and The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams (1997). He also is a contributor to Christopher Bigsby's The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller and to Don Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby's The Cambridge History of American Drama, Vol. 3 (2000). Roudane is the editor of the South Atlantic Review.