Sam Shepard Saw It All Coming


"Last August, the actor Randy Quaid tweeted a photo of himself, stripped to his bike shorts and pretending to be passed out next to a body of water, probably in his adopted home state of Vermont. Quaid had not worked regularly since an apparent psychotic break in 2010, when he announced, looking agitated at a press conference in Vancouver, that a conspiracy of assassins called the “Star Whackers” intended to murder him and his wife, Evi. ... Next to him was a computer tablet, a big knife, a bottle of Perrier, and—splayed out on the sun-warmed stone, like Quaid himself—a copy of Seven Plays, by Sam Shepard. The book appeared to be open to True West, the play in which he and his real-life younger brother, Dennis, starred as the quarreling brothers Lee and Austin off-Broadway 35 years ago. Many of Shepard’s plays feel like journeys into psychosis, so it seems appropriate that Quaid would reach for Shepard as a guide to his own crack-up. That Shepard is starting to feel like a guide for the rest of us is more surprising. ..."
The Atlantic
Sam Shepard: Mystery and Magic, Freedom and Fire
The Paris Review: Sam Shepard, The Art of Theater No. 12
PERFECT SOUND FOREVER: Sam Shepard

2017 August: Sam Shepard (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017)

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