Blood and bones yet dressed in poetry: The drama of Sam Shepard

C.W.E. Bigsby

doi:10.1080/10486809808568518

Blood and bones yet dressed in poetry: The drama of Sam Shepard

C.W.E. Bigsby

American Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Welding subject and form, the opening essay recapitulates with great lyricism Shepard's life and work in an attempt to map the excessive emotional terrain of the playwright's characters: fragmented, traumatized transients ruthlessly given over to incomprehensible, elementally violent passions that relentlessly attract and repel, consuming past and future. Composed with the traces of a reclusive, sensitive yet impetuous father who taught his son a love of poetry and music, and a sixties performance aesthetic, setting great store by immediacy and physical expression but gradually deepened with myth, archetype and costly candour, the emerging portrait is a highly paradoxical one: romantic, contemporaneous and timeless, vibrantly personal and American, showing affinity with the poetic, passion-infused drama of Tennessee Williams and Federico Garcia Lorca.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	19-30
Number of pages	12
Journal	Contemporary Theatre Review
Volume	8
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/10486809808568518
Publication status	Published - 1 Jan 1998

Keywords

Father
Fragmentation
Lorca (Federico Garcia)
Myth
Performance aesthetics
Realistic detail (absence of )
Williams (Tennessee)

Access to Document

10.1080/10486809808568518

Cite this

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Blood and bones yet dressed in poetry: The drama of Sam Shepard

Abstract

Keywords

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