present SAM SHEPARD'S  

TRUE WEST

 

directed by Geoff Button

  
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Born in 1943 in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, Sam Shepard has had a prolific career as a playwright, screenwriter, and actor.  His first plays, Cowboys and The Rock Garden, were produced in New York in 1963.  During the 1960s and 1970s, while drumming with such bands as "Lothar and the Hand People," Shepard developed his signature style as a playwright.  His plays include Tooth of Crime (1972), Curse of the Starving Class (1976), Pulitzer Prize winner Buried Child (1979), Fool for Love (1982), A Lie of the Mind (1986), States of Shock (1991), The Late Henry Moss (2001), and God of Hell (2004).  Featuring dark humor, abusive relationships, slippages in time, lapses in memory, and alcoholic fathers wandering in the desert, Shepard's works have drawn comparisons to "magic realism."    

True West premiered at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco on July 10, 1980.  The production's ill-fated transfer to New York caused a major rift between Shepard and Joseph Papp, then artistic director at the Public Theatre.  Probably the most famous production, starring John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, grew out of Steppenwolf's 1982 revival.  Most recently, Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly alternated the roles of Austin and Lee on Broadway.

The two brothers in True West are fighting over what it means to be a man today.    Shepard's cowboys have traded in their guns for golf clubs.  Panning for gold in Hollywood requires a different set of skills.  Austin and Lee search for authenticity and identity in a world of smog and freeways and TV News. Twenty-five years after True West was written, SUVs, virtual reality, and 24-hour cable news networks have only made that search more complicated.