La Turista (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sam Shepard
- First Published: 1968
- Type of Work: Play
- Genres: Drama
- Subjects: Traveling or travelers, Sick persons, Mexico or Mexicans, Diseases
- Locales: Mexico
Shepard wrote his first two-act play while living in Mexico; the mirroring acts give him a structure for his ideas that would work in several subsequent plays, including The Tooth of Crime, Geography of a Horse Dreamer, and Operation Sidewinder. Shepard takes advantage of the automatic tendency on the part of the audience to compare and contrast the events of each act, thereby informing both parts in the examination.
Kent and Salem are traveling in Mexico (in act 1) when Kent becomes very sick with la turista, the Mexican slang name for diarrhea. In a...
[The entire page is 793 words long]
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