Research Guide to American Literature

the idealistic American notion that one can emerge from humble beginnings to
become anything or anyone. In Shepard’s dramatic world, however, transforma-
tion may promise wealth and fame but also, and more typically, dislocation and
disassociation from the past and from others. Shepard’s own life suggests an
ongoing process of self-creation and invention. In addition to being a playwright,
he is a musician (playing in the rock bands Moray Eels and Holy Modal Round-
ers in the late 1960s) and has toured with folk singer Bob Dylan and poet Allen
Ginsberg, experiences he describes in Rolling Thunder Logbook (1977). Shepard is
also an accomplished actor; his most famous role, perhaps, was playing test pilot
Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983), a movie role that brought him an Oscar
nomination and celebrity. He has also written screenplays for Paris, Texas (1984),
directed by Wim Wenders, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes
Film Festival, and for Far North (1988), starring Jessica Lange, to whom Shepard
has been married since 1986.
Born on 5 November 1943 on an army base in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, as
Samuel Shepard Rogers VII, Shepard was nicknamed “Steve” to distinguish him
from his father. As an adult he dropped both the nickname and Rogers to become
Sam Shepard. His father was a pilot in the United States Army Air Corps in
World War II, and his mother, Jane Elaine (Schook) Rogers, was a teacher. The
family, which includes two younger sisters, Deedee and Sandy, was transferred
from one army base to another in places as varied as Florida, Guam, South
Dakota, and Utah, eventually moving to a farm in Duarte, California, a suburb of
Pasadena, when his father retired in 1949.
After graduating from high school, Shepard spent a year at a junior college
majoring in agricultural science. Despite limited acting experience, he quit school
in 1962 to join the Bishop’s Company Repertory Players, touring with them
across the nation. In 1963, he left the troupe to stay in New York and, like many
would-be actors, supported himself as a busboy. While working at The Village
Gate (a job he got with the help of high-school friend, Charles “Charlie” Mingus
Jr., son of the jazz musician), he met Ralph Cook, founder of Theatre Genesis,
part of the Off-Off-Broadway circuit. Cook encouraged Shepard to write and
produced his first plays, among them Cowboys (1964; revised as Cowboys #2,
1967), Rock Garden (1964), and Chicago (1965). In these early plays Shepard
began using motifs that he continued to explore in later plays. The myth of the
American West features largely, for example, as does sibling rivalry and dysfunc-
tional father-son relationships. The competing brothers of Cowboys #2 and the
distant father in Rock Garden foreshadow elements of True West.
His early one-act plays established Shepard’s reputation, and in 1966 he
received Obie Awards for Chicago, Icarus’s Mother (1965), and Red Cross (1966),
making him the first playwright to win three in one year. This critical acclaim
led to a commission for Operation Sidewinder (1970), produced at the Repertory
Theatre of Lincoln Center in New York City. Shepard was unhappy with the
result, and audiences were alienated by the play’s complicated and surreal plot
involving a covert military operation, sophisticated computers, Hopi ritual, and
rock music. It was Shepard’s first “flop” and received almost uniformly scathing
reviews.

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