Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, director and screenwriter whose career spanned half a century.[1] He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. New York magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation."[2]
Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society.[3] His style evolved from the absurdism of his early off-off-Broadway work to the realism of later plays like Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class.[4]
Early life
Sam Shepard was born on November 5, 1943, in the Chicago suburb of Fort Sheridan, Illinois.[5] He was named Samuel Shepard Rogers III after his father, Samuel Shepard Rogers Jr. (1917–1984),[6] but was called Steve Rogers.[7]
His father was a teacher and farmer who served in the United States Army Air Forces as a bomber pilot during World War II. Shepard characterized his father as "a drinking man, a dedicated alcoholic".[8] His mother, Jane Elaine (née Schook; 1917–1994), was a teacher and a native of Chicago.[9]
Shepard moved to New York City in 1963 and found work as a busboy at the Village Gate nightclub. The following year, the Village Gate's head waiter, Ralph Cook, founded the experimental stage company Theater Genesis, housed at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in Manhattan. Two of Shepard's earliest one-act plays, The Rock Garden and Cowboys, debuted at Theater Genesis in October 1964. It was around this time that he adopted the professional name Sam Shepard.[11]
In 1965, Shepard's one-act plays Dog and The Rocking Chair were produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club.[12] These were the first of many productions of Shepard's work at La MaMa during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 1967, Tom O'Horgan directed Shepard's Melodrama Play alongside Leonard Melfi's Times Square and Rochelle Owens' Futz at La MaMa.[13] In 1969, Jeff Bleckner directed Shepard's play The Unseen Hand at La MaMa.[14] Bleckner then directed The Unseen Hand alongside Forensic and the Navigators at the nearby Astor Place Theatre in 1970.[15]
Shepard's play Shaved Splits was directed at La MaMa in 1970 by Bill Hart.[16] Seth Allen directed Melodrama Play at La MaMa the following year.[17] In 1981, Tony Barsha directed The Unseen Hand at La MaMa. The production then transferred to the Provincetown Playhouse and ran for over 100 performances.[18]Syracuse Stage co-produced The Tooth of Crime at La MaMa in 1983.[19] Also in 1983, the Overtone Theatre and New Writers at the Westside co-produced Shepard's plays Superstitions and The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife at La MaMa.[20]John Densmore performed in his own play Skins and Shepard and Joseph Chaikin's play Tongues, directed as a double bill by Tony Abatemarco, at La MaMa in 1984.[21] Nicholas Swyrydenko directed a production of Geography of a Horse Dreamer at La MaMa in 1985.[22]
Cowboy Mouth, a collaboration with his then-lover Patti Smith, was staged at The American Place Theatre in April 1971, providing early exposure for Smith, who would become a well-known musician. The story and characters in Cowboy Mouth were inspired by Shepard and Smith's relationship. After opening night, he abandoned the production and fled to New England without a word to anyone involved.[23]
Shortly thereafter, Shepard relocated with his wife and son to London. While in London, he immersed himself in the study of G.I. Gurdjieff's Fourth Way, a recurring preoccupation for much of his life. Returning to the United States in 1975, he moved to the 20-acre Flying Y Ranch in Mill Valley, California, where he raised a young colt named Drum and rode double with his young son on an appaloosa named Cody.[24][25][26][27][28] Shepard continued to write plays and served for a semester as Regents' Professor of Drama at the University of California, Davis.
Shepard accompanied Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue of 1975 as the screenwriter for Renaldo and Clara that emerged from the tour. However, because much of the film was improvised, Shepard's work was seldom used. Rolling Thunder Logbook, his diary of the tour, was published in 1978. A decade later, Dylan and Shepard co-wrote the 11-minute song "Brownsville Girl", included on Dylan's 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded and on later compilations.
In 1975, Shepard was named playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where he created many of his notable works, including his Family Trilogy. One of the plays in the trilogy, Buried Child (1978), won the Pulitzer Prize, and was nominated for five Tony Awards.[29] This marked a major turning point in his career, heralding some of his best-known work, including True West (1980), Fool for Love (1983), and A Lie of the Mind (1985). A comic tale of reunion, in which a young man drops in on his grandfather's Illinois farmstead only to be greeted with indifference by his relations, Buried Child saw Shepard stake a claim to the psychological terrain of classic American theater. True West and Fool for Love were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.[30][31] Some critics have expanded the trilogy to a quintet, including Fool for Love and A Lie of the Mind. Shepard won a record-setting ten Obie Awards for writing and directing between 1966 and 1984.
In 2010, A Lie of the Mind was revived in New York at the same time as Shepard's new play Ages of the Moon opened there.[32] Reflecting on the two plays, Shepard said that the older play felt "awkward", adding, "All of the characters are in a fractured place, broken into pieces, and the pieces don't really fit together," while the newer play "is like a Porsche. It's sleek, it does exactly what you want it to do, and it can speed up but also shows off great brakes."[33] The revival and the new play also coincided with the publication of Shepard's collection Day out of Days: Stories.[34] The book includes "short stories, poems and narrative sketches... that developed from dozens of leather-bound notebooks [Shepard] carried with him over the years."[33]
Over the years, Shepard taught extensively on playwriting and other aspects of theater. He gave classes and seminars at various theater workshops, festivals, and universities. Shepard was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.[35] In 2000, Shepard demonstrated his gratitude to the Magic Theatre by staging The Late Henry Moss as a benefit for the theater, in San Francisco. The cast included Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, and Cheech Marin. The limited, three-month run was sold out. In 2001, Shepard played General William F. Garrison in the film Black Hawk Down. Although he was cast in a supporting role, Shepard enjoyed renewed interest in his talent for screen acting.
Shepard performed Spalding Gray's final monologue Life Interrupted for the audiobook version, released in 2006. In 2007, Shepard contributed banjo to Patti Smith's cover of Nirvana's song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on her album Twelve. Although many artists had an influence on Shepard's work, one of the more significant was Joseph Chaikin, a veteran of The Living Theatre and founder of The Open Theater.[11] The two worked together on various projects, and Shepard has stated that Chaikin was a valuable mentor.
In 2011, Shepard starred in the film Blackthorn. His final film appearance is Never Here, which premiered in June 2017 but had been filmed in 2014.[36] Shepard also appeared in the television series Bloodline from 2014 to 2017.[37]
Directing
At the beginning of his career, Shepard did not direct his own plays. His early plays had a number of different directors, but were most frequently directed by Ralph Cook, the founder of Theatre Genesis. Later, while living at the Flying Y Ranch, Shepard formed a successful playwright-director relationship with Robert Woodruff, who directed the premiere of Buried Child (1982). During the 1970s, Shepard decided that his vision for his plays required him to direct them himself. He directed many of his own plays from that point onward. With only a few exceptions, he did not direct plays by other playwrights. He also directed two films but reportedly did not see film directing as a major interest.
Personal life
When Shepard first arrived in New York City, he roomed with Charlie Mingus, Jr., a friend from high school and the son of jazz musician Charles Mingus. Shepard then lived with actress Joyce Aaron.
From 1969 to 1984, he was married to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970).
From 1970 to 1971, Shepard was involved in an extramarital affair with musician Patti Smith, who remained unaware of his identity as a multiple Obie Award-winning playwright until it was divulged to her by Jackie Curtis. Smith said: "Me and his wife still even liked each other. I mean, it wasn't like committing adultery in the suburbs or something."[38]
Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote two songs about her affairs with Shepard during Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975. In "Coyote", from her eighth studio album Hejira, she recounts Shepard's seduction of her at a period while he was both married and having an extramarital affair with tour manager Christine O'Dell with the lines: "He's got a woman at home, another woman down the hall, but he seems to want me anyway."[39] Meanwhile, in "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter", written during the same tour, Mitchell referenced the closeness between their birthdays, calling them "twins of spirit".[40]
Shepard met actress Jessica Lange on the set of the 1982 film Frances, in which they were both acting. He moved in with her in 1983, and they were together for 27 years; they separated in 2009.[41] They had two children, Hannah Jane Shepard (born 1986) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987). In 2003, Shepard's elder son, Jesse, wrote a book of short stories, and Shepard appeared with him at a reading at City Lights Bookstore.[42]
After a turbulent trip on an airliner returning from Mexico in the 1960s, he apparently vowed never to fly again.[45] Despite this longstanding aversion to flying, Shepard allowed Chuck Yeager to take him up in a jet in 1982 in preparation for playing the pilot in the film The Right Stuff.[46][47] Shepard cited his fear of flying as a source for a character in his 1966 play Icarus's Mother.[48] His character went through an airliner crash in the film Voyager.
In the early morning hours of January 3, 2009, Shepard was arrested and charged with speeding and drunk driving in Normal, Illinois.[49] He pleaded guilty to both charges on February 11, 2009, and was sentenced to 24 months probation, alcohol education classes, and 100 hours of community service.[50] On May 25, 2015, Shepard was arrested again in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for aggravated drunk driving.[51] Those charges were later dismissed as having no likelihood of conviction at trial.[52]
His 50-year friendship with Johnny Dark, stepfather to O-Lan Jones, was the subject of the 2013 documentary Shepard & Dark by Treva Wurmfeld.[53] A collection of Shepard and Dark's correspondence, Two Prospectors, was also published that year.[54]
Death
Shepard died on July 27, 2017, at his home in Midway, Kentucky, aged 73, from complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).[5][55][56] Patti Smith paid homage to their long collaboration in The New Yorker.[57] Fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, who had co-starred with Shepard in Mud, learned of Shepard's death during a television interview and was shocked by the news, ending the interview saying: "See you in the next one, Sam."[58]
^Shewey, Don (1997). Sam Shepard. Perseus Books Group. p. 13. ISBN978-0-30680-770-1. He was born Samuel Shepard Rogers III and called Steve, although if he were royalty his name would have been Samuel Shepard Rogers VII.
^Blackburn, John (May 1, 1996). "III. Cowboy Mouth". Portrait of the Artist: Sam Shepard and the Anxiety of Identity. Archived from the original on December 6, 2015. ((cite book)): |website= ignored (help)
^"The Flying Y Ranch". San Rafael Daily Independent Journal. August 19, 1963. p. 13 – via NewspaperARCHIVE.com. The Flying Y Ranch above Mill Valley is a popular place throughout the year with 4-H groups and Southern Marin Horsemen's Assn. members...
^Oldenburg, Chuck (July 2001). "Where is Homestead Valley?". Mill Valley Historical Society. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
^Oldenburg, Chuck (August 2013). "4-H Valley Riders". Mill Valley Historical Society. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
Radavich, David. "Back to the (Plutonian) Midwest: Sam Shepard's The God of Hell". New England Theatre Journal 18 (2007): 95–108.
Radavich, David. "Rabe, Mamet, Shepard, and Wilson: Mid-American Male Dramatists of the 1970s and '80s". The Midwest Quarterly XLVIII: 3 (Spring 2007): 342–58.
