Cambridge University Press 0521771587 - The Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard Edited by Matthew Roudane Excerpt More information

´ MATTHEW ROUDANE

Introduction

Sam Shepard conferred upon the American stage its postmodernity in the 1960s. Of course he was not the only one to do so, but he interjected a youthful, exuberant, and experimental voice that extended our appreciation of a postmodern aesthetic. In the 2000s, Shepard continues experimenting with dramatic form and structure. He traverses the borders of faith, logic, and social coherence to reconnoiter a mythic and cultural terrain filled with uncertainty and the near-absence of love. His is a Zolaesque world, a malevolent universe in which a sense of bafflement and loss prevail. As Baylor says in A Lie of the Mind (1985), “We’re all gonna get clobbered when we least expect it.”1 Contextualized within a narrative history of the American theatre, seeing characters “clobbered” on stage is hardly unique. From Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill to Edward Albee and Adrienne Kennedy, American playwrights have presented a rich, if disturbing, series of physical, psychological, and moral assaults. Still, within the works of many twentiethcentury American playwrights – Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953), O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956), Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959), Marsha Norman’s Getting Out (1977), Tony Kushner’s companion plays, Angels in America (parts One and Two, 1991, 1992), and Margaret Edson’s Wit (1999) – there is more often than not an implied sense of recovery, or some epiphanic coming to terms with one’s self and culture. Or if it is too late for a John Proctor or Mary Tyrone, perhaps the spark of recognition transpires within the audience. For many American dramatists, confrontation triggers catharsis, catharsis insight, and that insight becomes a still point whose defining moment, itself, is the mechanism for a transcendent awareness, signaling the first step