SAM SHEPARD

actor/ playwright... a prominent figure of the avant garde. His work is famously absurd. His humor is grotesque and his language is frank and dry. An air of the modern West haunts his work and often establishes a dusty setting suitable for loaners and drifters.


Samuel ‘Steve’ Shepard Rogers VII

b. 5 – NOV. – 1943, Fort Sheridan, Illinois

He would later drop ‘Rogers’ and stick with simply ‘Shepard’ (perhaps) because ‘Steve Rogers’ was also the name of the original Captain America!





Shepard grew up in a suffocating, rural town. His father was an alcoholic and his mother was distant: his memories of home are bleak. His father had been a bomber pilot in WWII… he retired and took up avocado farming in Duarte, CA (a rural, LA suburb).

In high school, Shepard worked as a ranch hand for his father. He studied agriculture at Mount San Antonio Junior College for three semesters… he left to join a traveling theater group, THE BISHOP’S REPERTORY COMPANY. The troupe’s mission was “Christian-oriented drama.”

By 1963, he was in Greenwich. Shepard claimed to be a heroin addict and managed to sidestep the Vietnam draft. He lived with Charles Mingus (his father, jazz musician, Charlie Mingus) and bussed tables at the Village Gate.

Greenwich Village, 1960s















Shepard with former girlfriend, Patti Smith
(singer-songwriter/artist/poet associated with the Punk Rock movement)


The counterculture was in bloom. Shepard stayed involved. He worked at experimental spots… like La Mama, Cafe Cino, the Open Theatre, and the American Place Theatre. He was the drummer for the band HOLY MODAL ROUNDERS.


He takes drugs, writes, and acts.
Theater, dance, music, and literature are undergoing a revolution.

THE Bob Dylan...

His idols:
Jack Kerouac,
Allen Ginsberg,
and Bob Dylan.

Allen Ginsberg,
Human Be-In festival,
San Francisco, 1967

In 1964 Shepard wrote two plays for Ralph Cook, headwaiter at the Village Gate and founder of Theater Genesis. He signed Cowboys and The Rock Garden ‘Sam Shepard.’ The plays are avant garde and staples of the counterculture. Critics from uptown papers weren’t thrilled but his work was celebrated by critics from alternative papers like The Village Voice.

Next, Shepard asked Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) to produce some of his plays.
Albee produces Up to Thursday – based on Shepard’s experience of sidestepping the draft. The play launched Shepard’s career.

plays by Sam Shepard

Shepard's Action
"Liza, Lupe, Jeep and Shooter are trapped in a cold, isolated cabin after a mysterious 'crisis.' Time has passed since the days of mass-media and indoor plumbing and they are struggling to pull off a holiday meal. Limited food, an uncertain future and overwhelming boredom begin to take their toll with disturbing and absurd results. In this hilarious marriage between the realistic and bizarre, Shepard offers a stirring look at the unplugged American mind." - UMBC Theatre




Kicking a Dead Horse
"A sick-souled Manhattan art dealer tries to resurrect his inner cowboy.
"... a tarp slides from the stage to reveal the majestic corpse of a horse lying supine. Just in front of the body is a horse-size hole in the ground. All is silent for a moment as honky-tonk music fades, and then a spray of earth flies up from the hole. Another follows a few seconds later. Out jumps a shovel, followed by the grave-digger himself, a bedraggled, angry-looking, mud-smeared fellow in a bolo tie, played by the terrific Irish actor Stephen Rea.
"... he fled west in a desperate search for 'authenticity.' He isn’t sure where he lost it, or if he ever really had it, but he knows for certain that it’s as scarce as sagebrush in the concrete-and-glass canyons of New York City. A spiritual crisis found him heaving lucrative pieces of art out the window and onto the Park Avenue sidewalk in a frenzy of self-disgust. Now Hobart has left career, foundering marriage and all else behind to go back to his roots.
"Unfortunately his four-legged vehicle of redemption, a beloved old horse, has let him down. 'Barely even got started on the Grand Sojourn, and he drops from underneath me,' he says with bitter disgust, then gives the poor creature the first of many swift blows to the belly with his boot. Still, Hobart refuses to let the vultures and coyotes and the blazing sun do their worst. He’s determined to bury the big, beautiful animal, and as he talks he embarks on a bruising campaign to wrestle the dead horse into his welcoming grave..." -Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: Published 15 - JUL - 2008

The List...
Kicking a Dead Horse, 2007
When the World Was Green, 2006
The God Of Hell, 2004
Pure Accident, 2004
Simpatico, 2004
The Late Henry Moss, 2000
States Of Shock, 1991
Hawk Moon, 1989
The War In Heaven, 1987
A Lie Of the Mind, 1985
Shepardsets, 1984
Fool For Love, 1983
Superstitions, 1981
Jackson's Dance, 1980
True West, 1980
Jacaranda, 1979
Savage/Love, 1979
Buried Child, 1978
Seduced, 1978
Tongues, 1978
Curse of the Starving Class, 1977
Inacoma, 1977
Angel City, 1976
The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill On the Fve Of Killing His Wife, 1976
Suicide in B Flat, 1976
Action, 1975
Killer's Head, 1975
Geography of a Horse Dreamer, 1974
Little Ocean, 1974
Blue Bitch, 1973
Nightwalk, 1973
The Tooth Of Crime, 1972
Back Bog Beast Bait, 1971
Cowboy Mouth, 1971
Mad Dog Blues, 1971
Operation Sidewinder, 1970
Shaved Splits, 1970
The Holy Ghostly, 1969
The Unseen Hand, 1969
Oh! Calcutta!, 1969
Cowboys #2, 1967
Forensic and the Navigators, 1967
Melodrama Play, 1967
La Turista, 1967
Red Cross, 1966
4-H Club, 1965
Chicago, 1965
Dog, 1965
Fourteen Hundred Thousand, 1965
Icarus's Mother, 1965
Rocking Chair, 1965
Up To Thursday, 1965
Cowboys, 1964
The Rock Garden, 1964
Eyes For Consuela, -
Far North, -
Silent Tongue, -

RESOURCES
www.umbc.edu/.../archives/art/index.html
www.sam-shepard.com/playwright.html
http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsS/shepard-sam.html
http://www.nndb.com/people/502/000024430/
http://www.thespiannet.com/actors/S/shepard_sam/index.shtml