Authenticity, Self-Invention and the Power of Storytelling: Sam Shepard’s Postmillennial Work
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18778/2353-6098.6.04Keywords:
Sam Shepard, A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations), Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Field Day, The UK City of Culture, Derry/Londonderry, authenticity, self-inventionAbstract
The article reflects upon Sam Shepard’s playwrighting in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, paying particular attention to his last play, A Particle of Dread (Oedipus Variations), written specifically for the Derry/Londonderry City of Culture celebrations in 2013, and originally produced by the renowned Field Day Theatre Company. The article seeks to offer an insight into Shepard’s mature multilayered text, which, in many respects, looks back upon almost fifty years of his artistic creativity and, at the same time, expands his vision. It also addresses the realisation of Shepard’s play in performance and the significance of his text in an interplay of multiple creative inputs involved in the production process.
While revisiting the familiar landscapes and themes, Shepard’s most recent work negotiates the boundaries between the actual and the fictitious, raising debates about the persistence of myths, mortality and the haunting legacies of the past. Richly intertextual and conspicuously metatheatrical, it grapples with questions of authenticity, performativity and storytelling – the narratives that are passed down, and how they form and inform our lives. It also engages with, and further problematises, issues of personal and cultural identity, which constitute Shepard’s most durable thematic threads, revealing both the dramatist’s acute concern with fateful determinism and commitment to self-invention. Significantly, while Shepard’s postmillennial output highlights the author’s ongoing preoccupation with instability and frontiers of various sorts (from those topographic, temporal and sociopolitical to those of language and art), it equally intimates his attentiveness to correspondences between times, lands and cultures.
References
Bottoms, Stephen J. 1998. The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511586255
Brantley, Ben. 2014. “Call Out the Patricide Squad. A Particle of Dread: Sam Shepard’s Take on Oedipus.” New York Times, November 23. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/theater/a-particle-of-dread-sam-shepards-take-on-oedipus.html DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Coe, Robert. 1980. “Sam Shepard – Playwright Laureate of the West.” San Francisco Chronicle, December 21: 35–38.
Google Scholar
Coyle, Jane. 2013. “A Particle of Dread. Field Day Add Sam Shepard’s Oedipus Story to Its Impressive Canon.” Culture Northern Ireland, December 3. https://www.culturenorthernireland.org/reviews/performing-arts/particle-dread DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Creedon, Emma. 2015. Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance. New York: Palgrave.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527417
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. 2010. “Derry/Londonderry named UK City of Culture 2013.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/derry-londonderry-named-uk-city-of-culture-2013--2 DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Field Day. n.d. “Field Day – A Brief History.” http://fieldday.ie/about DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Hampton, Wilborn. 2014. “‘A Particle of Dread’: Shepard’s Oedipus At Cucamonga.” HuffPost, November 24. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-particle-of-dread-shepa_b_6212698 DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Kakutani, Michiko. 1984. “Myths, Dreams, Realities – Sam Shepard’s America.” New York Times, January 29. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/29/theater/myths-dreams-realities-sam-shepard-s-america.html DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
McPherson, Conor. 2012. “Introduction.” In: Sam Shepard. Fifteen One-Act Plays. New York: Vintage, xi–xv.
Google Scholar
The National Archives. 2010. “The race is on to find UK’s first ‘City of Culture’ for 2013.” https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100512152140/http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/media_releases/6256.aspx DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Negra, Diane. 2006. “The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture.” In: Diane Negra (ed.). The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 1–19.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822387848-001
Rea, Stephen. 2008. “Foreword.” In: Sam Shepard. Kicking a Dead Horse. New York: Vintage, ix–xii.
Google Scholar
Roudané, Matthew. 2002. “Introduction.” In: Matthew Roudané (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–6.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521771587.001
The Sam Shepard Web Site. 2014. “A Particle of Dread.” https://www.sam-shepard.com/particle.html DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Shepard, Sam. 1986. “Sam Shepard on Working with Dylan, Why Jim Morrison Has No Sense of Humor.” Interview by Jonathan Cott. Rolling Stone, December 18. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/sam-shepard-on-working-with-dylan-why-jim-morrison-has-no-sense-of-humor-193848/ DOA: 2.04.2019.
Google Scholar
Shepard, Sam. 2002. “Shepard on Shepard.” In: Matthew Roudané (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 64–80.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521771587.004
Shepard, Sam. 2008. Kicking a Dead Horse. New York: Vintage.
Google Scholar
Shepard, Sam. 2012. Fifteen One-Act Plays. New York: Vintage.
Google Scholar
Shepard, Sam. 2013. “The Good Guy and Bad Guy Stuff Just Doesn’t Interest Me.” Interview with Clare Dwyer Hogg. Observer, December 1. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/dec/01/sam-shepard-interview-oedipus-derry DOA: 1.08.2019.
Google Scholar
Shepard, Sam. 2017. A Particle of Dread. New York: Vintage.
Google Scholar
Sophocles. 1988. Oedipus Rex. Trans. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. In: Dudley Fitts (ed.). Four Greek Plays. San Diego: Harcourt, 69–140.
Google Scholar
Wade, Leslie A. 1997. Sam Shepard and the American Theatre. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Google Scholar
Wade, Leslie A. 2007. “Sam Shepard and the American Sunset: Enchantment of the Mythic West.” In: David Krasner (ed.). A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 285–300.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470996805.ch18
Watt, Stephen. 2009. Beckett and Contemporary Irish Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar
Watt, Stephen. 2015. “Sam Shepard, Irish Playwright.” In: D.E. Morse (ed.). Irish Theatre in Transition: From the Late Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century. New York: Palgrave, 241–56.
Google Scholar
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137450692_17
Winters, John J. 2017. Sam Shepard: A Life. Berkeley: Counterpoint.
Google Scholar
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.