Product Description
Set within the netherworld of thoroughbred racing, this hair-raisingly funny new play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of True West explores the classical themes of memory, loyalty, and restitution. Simpatico launches readers into regions where high society meets the low life, and where, as one of the main characters observes, "someone is cutting someone else's throat."Amazon.com Review
The script of Shepard's three-act drama about a desperate mantrying to hold onto his wife and career is set against a backdrop ofprofessional horse racing.Pulitzer-winner Shepard structures hislatest exploration of new American archetypes as a detective story. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Simpatico
Shepard has been a favorite playwright of mine since the 80s
Simpatico stands out as being a modern film noir
It is in my top 5 this season for submissions to direct at local theaters
See the film, Nolte, Bridges, Finney, Stone & Kinner
GREAT

A meditation on heartache.
A recommended Shepard must-read!

From Cowboys (1964) at the Theater Genesis to Icarus's Mother (1965) at Café Cino to La Turista (1967) at La MaMa to The Tooth of Crime (1972) at Open Space, Shepard's "lost men" have stumbled across the stage in a way that has chronicled the fascinating interstice between eras and between generations. Shepard represents the desert poet, the rambling musician, the ill-fated prairie homesteader of American cultural memory, alone in a crowd and unassuaged by logic or love. Curse of the Starving Class (1977), Buried Child (1978), and True West (1980) moved him away from the perception that he was simply an avant-garde artist, an experimenter, and established his style and wide identification as a mainstream American playwright. In Fool for Love (1983) and A Lie of the Mind (1985), he joined Rabe and Mamet as portrayers of American masculinity in conflict with warring emotions and sexual violence. A Lie of the Mind, particularly, drew a line in the sand of public recognition as a dense work of loft and dimension, an imprecation and apologia of the last lone white male bellowing in the bleak boozy night.

As for Simpatico, it touches on all the Shepardian themes in its exploration of men, and women, on the edge, entering into a precarious and ever-shifting balance of power. It is, in the words of one director, "a meditation on heartache". Shepard, in his potentially pessimistic world, won't break into an emotional investigation of heartache per se, but examines the undercarriage of the heart and its wild persistent beat in an empty landscape.

When Simpatico opened at New York's Public Theatre in the fall of 1994, critics raved and razzed in equal measure. Some audiences may not want to take the journey, but there are riches to be mined here. In jolting shift from Kentucky to California, Simpatico traces a web of secrets, betrayal, love, loss, and black comic hope. Sam Shepard's American master-series continues.

Morality, Shepard style
To me Shepard is saying that whether you are a pauper living in a hovel or a gentleman living on an estate, the cantankerous affects of life without morals will get you. All participants in the acts captured in the 'pictures' were ultimately victims.

However, describing this play exclusively as a moral treatise would be a moral outrage! This play is classic Shepard. The characters are edgy, the dialogue is light and quick, the setting desert western, and the plot is charged. Shepard's characters seemed to me to be at once unbelievable, and yet a little bit more like myself than I'd like to admit.

SIMPATICO, the best play ever written
Sam Shepard's SIMPATICO is by far the best play ever written. Gripping dialogue, suspense, romance, intrigue, comic relief, deciet, lost love, and turmoil fill the pages of this play with unstoppable reading pleasure!

When Vinnie calls his best friend, Lyle, down to his down-and-out home in Cucumonga California, they start discussing a conflict which has been unresolved for over twenty years now. My favorite scene is when Rosie Carter, Lyle's wife and Vinnie's old girlfriend, comes in. She has the most important character, and her eleventh-hour performance is remarkable and simply powerful. Rosie is the tragic beauty that makes this play stand out.

About the movie SIMPATICO, possibly one of the best pictures of all time. Nick Nolte, Jeff Bridges, and Sharon Stone. Stone shines above all as the beautiful, tragic Rosie.

READ IT! ... Read more

Product Description
One of the plays that first announced Sam Shepard as an original voice in American theater, Tooth of Crime is his thrillingly innovative rock drama, published here in a revised edition that is as fresh and provocative as the original was more than thirty years ago.

An aging rock star in a world in which entertainment and street warfare go hand in hand, Hoss must defend himself against Crow, a newcomer who battles him for fame. Combining musical styles and intense dialogue in an unconventional musical-fantasy, Tooth of Crime riffs brilliantly on rising stars and fading legends, and rock lived and died for.


From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more

Product Description
Pulitzer Prize winner Sam Shepard’s latest play is an uproarious, brilliantly provocative farce that brings the gifts of a quintessentially American playwright to bear on the current American dilemma.

Frank and Emma are a quiet, respectable couple who raise cows on their Wisconsin farm. Soon after they agree to put up Frank’s old friend Haynes, who is on the lam from a secret government project involving plutonium, they’re visited by Welch, an unctuous government bureaucrat from hell. His aggressive patriotism puts Frank, Emma, and Haynes on the defensive, transforming a heartland American household into a scene of torture and promoting a radioactive brand of conformity with a dangerously long half life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great Title,Not That Great of a Play
I was really looking forward to reading this play because the title sounded so great. This play has a silly plot and asinine characters. I am so happy that this play is short because if it would have taken me a long time to read I would have been really unhappy with the time that I lost to reading this play. If you really want to read a good play then read Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg.

Worth Picking Up
This play by renowned playright Sam Shepard was entertaining enough. However, it's anti-war political agenda was too obvious and not enough to vault this play to a lasting level of literary greatness. All that aside though, the storyline carries the reader/viewer along and reads fast enough that it might be worth picking up.

-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

A Good Play No Matter What You Believe
While it cannot compare with Shepard's other works, i.e. 'Buried Child' or 'True West', it is still a great play.I picked it up one evening and simply couldn't put it down.A dark comedy that will keep you on the edge of your seat.I am a republican and do not agree with the ties this play makes with the Bush Adminstration, but I think this play is about the dangers of an ill-informed public and abused power, even though the play was written to reflect present day politics.No matter what your political affiliation may be, there is something in this play for everyone.

Welcome the Menace of Our Gov't come to Roost
I am now feeling very thankful for the existence of Sam Shepard. Here is someone aware and in touch with the current state of American pseudo-Patriotism, and it's appropriation of the essentials of American "values."
Frank and Emma are Wisconsin farmers, raising cattle all alone in the Heartland. Though Frank has taken in an old friend, Haynes and let him stay in the basement. After Haynes arrives, Welch shortly appears, full of eerie entitlement, red, white and blue cookies, American flags galore and a suspicion of Haynes presence. Much to the chagrin of Emma, Welch thinks nothing of the house, the front door, the property and the conventions of any social etiquette (i.e. civil liberties). Haynes meanwhile is on edge and frightened at the static charges he emits when touched, the mention of an institution from which he recently left and The God of Hell.
What The God of Hell is I'll not mention, but the implications of the government, specifically the Bush Administration's willingness to advocate torture, the heightened disregard of the common man and his home, and the insanity of nuclear production and the decimation our own land are thick and clear.
Shepard has created a swift one act, three scenes, in one setting, a kitchen/living room of Frank and Emma's home, which itself radiates a tension of menace and: "We're suddenly stung by our duty to a higher purpose. Our natural loyalties fall in line and we're amazed how simple it is to honor out one true heritage."

From script to production
I liked the play somuch, I talked a producer into making it
happen on stage at the Community College of Southern Nevada, Las
Vegas.We're having a lot of fun in rehearsals with THE GOD OF
HELL!But be warned, this play is NOT suited for everybody's
taste!!! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The blue collar Wild West, a la Sam
I had not read Shepard in many a moon, and it was good to check back into his strange version of America.This was written during his peak period (his recent stuff, most of which I have not read, is not as highly regarded), and like many of his other good ones, it concerns a squabbling family in the Southwest.The title and some of the dialogue indicates that Shepard viewed the travails of this clan as symptomatic of being part of the great white working class - and travails there are: alcoholism, violence, living with poverty breathing down their necks, smart alecky kids, a confused mother, a drunken, headstrong father.Parts of it are absurd and funny, but ultimately this is no comedy.

The play begins with the son Wesley, trying to repair the door his father, Weston, has smashed to bits in a drunken rage.The refrigerator is empty - there is a lot of action concerning the refrigerator and food.This is clearly a family in disarray.Both the parents are trying to sell the house out from under each other.The father is tough and dynamic, but seriously cracked, and much of the play concerns the other characters tiptoeing around and trying to figure out how to handle him.Most of the dialogue is standard American white trashese.There are a couple of monologs which, for me anyway, were not as effective.This was a good one. I would like to see it performed someday.It might be a little difficult though - the script calls for a live lamb.

Don't Go See This Play On A First Date
This is not a horrible play, but it is a horrible play to see on a first date.I made that mistake.I saw it back in the 80s off broadway in New York.I scored great tickets, first row.The theater was small and the stage was not set in an arch or elevated.

One of the charactors/props in the play was a live orphaned baby lamb kept in a baby playpen at the front of the stage.The lamb kept licking our fingers during the play and was very cute.So far so good, this first date was going ok.I was scoring points with the girl I was with.

Then the drama started.The family portrayed is disfunctional and under incredible stress.The violence increases and increases.Yelling, fighting--I don't want to spoil things for you, but things don't turn out well for the lamb at the end (for you PETA folks out there--through the use creative F/Xs no living lamb was hurt in the production).End result for me--not a very good first date.It was a better read.

Disguised Gem
Sam Shepard has created a beautiful story of a poor family struggling to keep their home, relationships, and sanity. His amazing symbols keep the reader thinking, and this proves to be a play that is much more than surface deep. I especially enjoyed his themes on class and destiny, as well as his ideas on family and rebirth. For me, this book was amazingly written and intriquingly complex; its tragedies make the reader reevaluate his/ her own life. It made me laugh out loud, but in addition to being funny, it was enlightening, symbolic, provocative. ... Read more

Product Description
4 Two Act Plays ... Read more

Product Description
These issues consist of the edited Proceedings of the Shepard conference, organized by the Belgian-Luxembourg American Studies Association and the Free University of Brussels (VUB), which took place in Brussels, 28-30 May 1993. It will be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates, professors, critics, theater practitioners, writers and those with a keen interest in the fields of literature, theater studies and cultural studies. ... Read more

Product Description
No dramatist in the recent history of the American theatre has gained more celebrity than Sam Shepard. Exploring a career that includes fifty stage and screen plays, four books of nondramatic writings, and over a dozen appearances in feature films, this work traces Shepard's rise from an Off-Off Broadway renegade to a Hollywood leading man, and explores his evolution from counterculture to cultural icon. The study situates Shepard's career within the shifting production modes and economic contexts of the American entertainment industry, and views his popularity against the identity politics of postwar American culture. Through an analysis of his life, plays, and screen roles, this book investigates how Shepard's dramatic voice and film persona address issues of American consensus and community. The study argues that Shepard's popularity--in an era of cultural diversification and dissent--owes much to nationalism and nostalgia and begs important questions concerning American myths, media representations, and the construction of an American audience.Amazon.com Review
Everyone seems to understand a piece of Sam Shepard--machomovie actor, off-Broadway revolutionary, reclusive horse breeder, Deanof American Playwrights--but assembling these personas into a coherentindividual would daunt the bravest of biographers. Leslie A. Wade, aUniversity of Louisiana associate theater professor, strives to chartShepard's obsessions and writing phases and to put them in context,both with Shepard's personal life and with the America he supposedlyembodies. Wade's dry style sometimes poorly serves the passionatesubject matter, but he provides new Shepard fans with perspective andplot summaries that are superior to all previous efforts. Thefull-blooded Shepard biography is still waiting to be written, butthis vigorous attempt may well serve as its outline. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fantastic book, little money
When I saw the book online, I never thought it would be such a nice book, good photography, complete movie script, incredible interviews...
a super adquisition for few money. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of seven plays by the award-winning American playwright, Sam Shepard, includes "Buried Child", for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. ... Read more

Product Description
Photographer, writer, award-winning filmmaker, and poet Douglas Kent Hall is one of the great documentarians of his generation. His photographs of mainstream and counterculture subjects include rock music icons, bodybuilders and prison inmates, cowboys and countercultural heroes. At centre is his exploration of the modern American West and the heart that beats there - sometimes violently, often poetically. For over thirty years, Hall has photographed and written about New Mexico's unique mix of places and people, a broad representation including ancient sites and Spanish churches, Indian ceremonial dances, portraits of artists and writers, viejos and vagabonds. This book presents 182 black-and-white images accompanied by Hall's insightful essay on the interplay of artistic process with the cultural and natural landscapes of New Mexico. "In New Mexico Light" is a celebration of New Mexico's contradictions and splendour through the photographs and words of a master observer. ... Read more

Product Description
A middle-aged playwright—in conflict with his ex-wife, his current girlfriend, and a legion of creditors—journeys from Hollywood to Atlanta to work with his youthful idol, legendary avant-garde director Joseph Chaikin.Thus begins a roller coaster ride of a very unusual sort, combining personal revelations with theatrical obsessions, a step-by-step disclosure of a master director’s rehearsal process with a search for spiritual truth (and a decent night’s sleep). Just hop aboard and get a backstage pass to the "holding-on-by-your-fingernails" reality of the contemporary American theater. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Can't Put It Down
It may sound weird to compare a book about a Jewish playwright's memoir about his career and working with famous director Joe Chaikin to Erica Jong - however, that's what came to mind.I remember when I first read "Fear of Flying" I was so taken with the character, so intrigued by her life and her adventures, that I took the book everywhere with me.This book has Chinese food all over it because I would cross the street from my home to the local Chinese restaurant, sit at the table each night, and spill food on it while enjoying every single word.It is hysterical, very moving and gives one a great deal of insight into the world of a neurotic playwright who is struggling with personal demons - and having the ride of his life.I'm glad the author took us with him.

Best Revenge: How Theater Saved My Life and Has Been Killing
This is a terrific book.It's a great read, a marvelous look at the struggles of an artist trying to make a living in the theater, and a must buy for anyone who plans to make the theater his or her life.

Fascinating and funny!Personal memoir at its best
This book may seem at first glance like something for a "niche" market -- people in the theater or the like -- but it's actually so entertaining, funny, skillfully written, moving and wonderfully offbeat that it speaks to any reader no matter what their interests.Fife has found a way to resonate with the universal experience of success/failure that we all share while still remaining excrutiatingly personal, honest and true to his own real story - and that's what memoir should do!All students of the theater should read this, but so should all students of life.And if you do, I guarentee it won't feel like "studying"...enjoy!

A real page-turner
I know that a book is good when I have to put everything else on hold until I finish it. This one grabbed me right from the beginning. On the very first page I felt as though I was the playwright, experiencing the highs and lows of being accepted, rejected and accepted again as an artist. This book was a lot of fun, full of dry wit and good humor. I especially enjoyed getting the inside track into the world of Broadway and film and finding out from a first-hand source what some of those Oscar-winning superstar actors are REALLY like. ... Read more

Product Description
A solitary man digs a hole in the ground, near a dead horse. Amidst the clutter of food and equipment stands Hobart Struther, who has ridden all the way out to the middle of nowhere on a holy mission. But one day into his “Great Sojourn,” things are looking bleak. His horse has choked to death, he's miles away from civilization, and there's not a person around to talk to – other than himself. As Hobart examines his rise — how he built a vast art collection while ensconced in a comfortable Park Avenue lifestyle — he digs deep into his own history, unearthing truths about his past while still struggling to find the answers he needs. With Shepard's linguistic flair, subtle humor, and probing insights, Kicking a Dead Horse is an invigorating addition to the works of one of America's most innovative playwrights. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Philosophical, not always successfully
I saw this play recently and i think it was not helped by a very declamatory actor in the lead.It is a one-person play that tries to wrestle with some big questions in an unusual way. It felt a little dry, but I applaud the effort and I'd like to see a production of it with an actor who could just honestly talk to an audience and show us his vulnerable side as he deals with feeling helpless, worthless and possible near the end of his life. ... Read more