Back to The Curse of the Starving Class Off-Stage Guide 

 

SHEPARD ON SHEPARD

“NOBODY HAS ACTUALLY EVER SUCCINCTLY DEFINED ‘THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.’ . . . I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE AMERICAN DREAM IS. I KNOW IT DOESN’T WORK. NOT ONLY DOESN’T IT WORK, THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM HAS CREATED EXTRAORDINARY HAVOC, AND IT’S GOING TO BE OUR DEMISE. . . . THE AMERICAN DREAM IS THIS FANTASY THAT’S PROMOTED THROUGH ADVERTISING. WE ALWAYS PREFER THE FANTASY OVER THE REALITY.”

—Sam Shepard (from “Shepard on Shepard: an Interview” by Matthew Roudané, 2000)

 

 I FEEL LIKE I’VE NEVER HAD A HOME, YOU KNOW? I FEEL RELATED TO THE COUNTRY, TO THIS COUNTRY, AND YET I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I FIT IN... THERE’S ALWAYS THIS KIND OF NOSTALGIA FOR A PLACE, A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN RECKON WITH YOURSELF.

 

–Sam Shepard

 

Sam Shepard Reading from "MOTEL CHRONICLES"

 

The California I knew, old rancho California, is gone. It just doesn’t exist, except maybe in little pockets. I lived on the edge of the Mojave Desert, an area that used to be farm country. There were all these fresh-produce stands with avocados and date palms. You could get a dozen artichokes for a buck or something. Totally wiped out now.

–from the 1997 interview in The Paris Review

 

 

I’D LIKE TO TRY A WHOLE DIFFERENT WAY OF WRITING NOW, WHICH IS VERY STARK AND NOT SO flASHY AND NOT FULL OF A LOT OF MYTHIC fiGURES AND EVERYTHING, AND TRY TO SCRAPE IT DOWN TO THE BONE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

–1974, after a decade working successfully in New York’s experimental theaters in the 1960s and early 70s

 

I grew up in a condition where the male influences around me were primarily alcoholics and extremely violent and, at the same time, like lost children, not knowing how to deal with it. . . . Slowly they began receding further and further away—receding from the family, receding from society.

–Shepard acknowledging his father’s influence in his life and work.

 

The one thing that keeps drawing me back to [writing about my family] is this thing that there is no escape from the family. . . . It started with a little tiny one-act play I wrote way back when called Rock Garden (1964), where there was, for the first time in my work, a father, a mother, and a son. It was a very simple one-act little play, but it keyed off into Curse of the Starving Class (1977), and that keyed off into Buried Child (1979). . . . It initiated something that I didn’t even see, I didn’t even recognize that this was going to be the impulse toward other things, and I certainly didn’t see myself spending my whole life on it. . . . The amazing thing to me is that, now, in this time, for some reason or another, the disaster inherent in this thing called the American Family is very, very resonant now with audiences.

–from a 2000 interview