If you download or print anything from this site, please consider making at least a $10.00 donation through PayPal.
I can maintain and expand this website only with your help.
“I wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn’t be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It’s a real thing, double nature. I think we’re split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It’s not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It’s something we’ve got to live with.” --Sam Shepard | |||||||||||||||||
Assignments
| The Play As part of PBS’s American Playhouse, John Malkovich and Gary Sinese star is a compelling version. On YouTube, the entire play is available or broken into 10 parts. Complete text. | ||||||||||||||||
Production Reviews New Republic -- “It is a dazzling piece of writing—terse, suggestive, mystifying, intense.” Version casts Tommy Lee Jones and Peter Boyle in a flawed production. 31 January 1981. Variety -- “It’s simply scaldingly funny, anfd formly grounded ijn a recognizable time and place, not to mention the primal territory of family dysfunction.” 10 March 2000. Observer -- “Sam Shepard’s screamfest is funny enough in its own weirdly schizophrenic right, with its dark, absurdist undertow of emotional murders and the death of the American family.” 27 March 2000. Nation -- “When the scenery is actually torn down in True West, the American home, brotherhood and the idea of masculinity are eviscerated.” Version casts Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly in both roles, with the two actors alternating the parts every three performances. 24 April 2000. National Review -- “In the end, one feels the brothers (and their different Wests) are equally inauthentic and tainted by their association with Tinseltown’s schlocky superficiality.” Same performers, different slant.19 June 2000. Oregon Live -- “In this confrontation, Shepard captures more than the unresolvable tension between the brothers, a tension that lies at the heart of the so-called true West; he | Video Clips
Critical Article “Nowhere Man and the Twentieth-Century Cowboy: Images of Identity and American History in Sam Shepard’s True West” -- yes! all 19 pages! | ||||||||||||||||
Poster Art This frequently-performed play has inspired powerful posters. Write an art analysis of your favorite, focusing on what the poster reveals about the play itself. (Click each poster to see a larger image).
|
True West is a play by American playwright Sam Shepard. Some critics consider it the third of a. Create a book Download as PDF Printable version. True West by Sam Shepard “I wanted to write a play about double nature, one that wouldn’t be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. Stream and download audiobooks to your computer, tablet or mobile phone. Bestsellers and latest releases. Try any audiobook Free! Listen to True West by Sam Shepard at Audiobooks.com.
If you download or print anything from this site, please consider making at least a $10.00 donation through PayPal.
I can maintain and expand this website only with your help.
Back to Assignments or Home.
Updated 18 February 2019.
Full Length Play, Comedy / 3m, 1f
Finalist! 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
This American classic explores alternatives that might spring from the demented terrain of the California landscape.
Read more +by Sam Shepard
Use this tool for cost estimates based on your specific needs.
Performing Groups
You'll have to sign in before you share your experience.
No account yet?
Create one
Sam Bobrick, Ron Clark