Shakespeare to Shepard
Shepard Annotations
Play video from 5:50 to end
Buried Child (Halie’s monologue) Jakarta Players
The scene opens on Halie’s slippers. As she babbles about her deceased son, Ansel, the viewer does not see Halie (except for her pink slippers) and the camera pans from Dodge to Tilden. Dodge and Tilden are unfazed and show no change in their actions or facial expressions as to what Halie is saying – Dodge continues to smoke on the couch and Tilden continues to shuck corn. This is significant because it demonstrates that Halie often babbles and the boys therefore do not care what she has to say. The viewer does not see Halie’s face until she begins to speak about a possible statue commemorating Ansel. As the camera pans upward toward Halie’s animated face, a picture of Halie and (presumably) Ansel enters the shot setting a further tone that Halie has not moved on since the death of her son. Next, Halie moves from her grieving reminiscing to a more “mother-told-you-so” air. Halie’s monologue concludes with her disgustedly uttering the words “Catholics” and “The mob” signaling a shift to a more angry/regretful tone. She ends with the line “I knew he’d never come back from the honeymoon” quite matter-of-fact which ends her emotional outburst so she can return back to the babbling Halie that is almost always present.
Play video from 13:26 to 14:20
Savage/Love (“Acting”) UAB Fringe Festival
Savage/Love is episodic in structure; therefore, each poem can be performed differently and is open to creative interpretations. This production of “Acting” takes a unique approach of two actors using two other actors as puppets. The “puppets” are overly dramatic with their body movements as well as with their facial expressions. For example, when the puppets “act the estrangement,” the male puppet buries his face and the female puppet poses with a forlorned hand on her forehead. When it is revealed that the “reconciliation was a success,” the puppets both display gaudy, over-the-top smiles at the audience. When the tone changes from happy love to a fight, the actors drop the puppets and begin to argue, face-to-face. Perhaps this is an artistic metaphor for lovers hiding their true emotions until it is too late and an argument ensues. The scene ends with the woman actor leaving and the male actor standing alone expressing that he no longer feels anything.
"Like Father"
http://www.sam-shepard.com/press111110.html
This article in Timeout Chicago from November 11, 2010, gives interesting insight into Sam Shepard’s father characters. Father-figures such as Dodge in Buried Child are loosely based on Shepard’s own father. The two had an abnormal relationship. For example, Sam Shepard’s father called him after Shepard had won the Pulitzer Prize; however, what he said was, “it would be remiss not to congratulate [his son].” Furthermore, according to Shepard, his father saw a production of Buried Child and proceeded to yell at the actors. Nevertheless, Sam Shepard’s father somewhat inspired his plays. In this interview, Shepard states, “We see our father in ourselves, we see our son in ourselves. It’s an old story.” Similarly, a section of Buried Child mirrors this idea as the character Vince describes his reflection in the car window as morphing from his face to his father’s to his grandfather’s and so on. Therefore, this interview offers interesting insights into Sam Shepard’s writing, specifically his play Buried Child.
"Sam Shepard"
http://www.sam-shepard.com/pressinterviewmag2011.html
This article in Interview Magazine from October 2011, is interesting because it discusses Sam Shepard’s beginnings as a playwright. Sam Shepard was inspired by Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The family structure in this work is what stuck out to Shepard. He said, “Everybody was going down, and nobody knew why or how, and they were all taking desperate measures to stay afloat. So I thought there was something about that that felt similar to my own background, and I felt I could maybe write some version of that.” Buried Child is one of his “family-plays” that may been inspired by this thought. When Sam Shepard began writing, he struggled with length and he therefore wrote many one-acts. He attributes this to the fact that he would just write; to him a play could be made from anything and everything that was going on around him. However, he claims that his works became longer and gained more sustenance when he began working on his “family-plays” which include Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child.