Shepard, Sam
Shepard, Sam ( 1943 – ),American playwright and actor, born in Illinois. Having staged his first plays in New York, Shepard spent four years (from 1971 ) living in London, where a number of his own plays were produced at the National Theatre and the Royal Court . His work deals with American mythologies, the death of the American Dream, and Americans' relationship to their land and history. His most famous work is True West ( 1980 ), in which two brothers in southern California argue over the nature of the ‘true’ American West—real or mythologized—where each character fights to maintain his own identity and destroy his brother's. Shepard's other plays include Buried Child ( 1978 ), which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1979 , and which links True West in a trilogy with Curse of the Starving Class ( 1976 ); and Fool for Love ( 1983 ), which Shepard directed off-Broadway...
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