Sam Shepard: Buried Child

One of the reasons for writing this thesis was to help readers and theatregoers better understand Shepard's plays and to let them see, at least partly, his intentions. Yet, to ask for a straightforward explanation or an unambiguous ending would mean to completely misunderstand the author. Samuel Shepard the playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, poet and musician as well as a cowboy and shaman - "a New World shaman" - is anything but a piece of cake. To know this much might be enough unless you plan to translate or direct one of his plays. And for these very purposes, I have decided to prepare a roadmap for understanding Samuel Shepard Rogers III. My goal was to show three main influences that helped to form Shepard's style. First, we will travel with young Sam eastwards all the way to New York in order to discover a brave new world. Only fifteen years later, we will set the sails in the same direction again, this time to accompany an unheard-off success - an Off-Off- Broadway show moving from San Francisco to New York to be eventually awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Unfortunately, this child prodigy we came with is dying; indeed, it is already a Buried Child. After twenty more years, Shepard will revise the text and claim that "it's now a better play". That is where our analysis starts. First, we will..