HNAR-230: True West: Works-Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard's plays, films, and prose have made him an inimitable, iconic figure in our cultural landscape. His theater pieces famously mine concepts of masculinity and the American west. Often set in the towns and deserts on LA's periphery, they explore contemporary themes including Cowboy Mouth's drug-addled, 1960s bohemia; The Tooth of Crime's paranoid, suicidal quest for rock 'n roll fame; Curse of the Starving Class's tragi-comic, suburban family dysfunction; True West's desperate, Hollywood-fueled sibling class war; Buried Child's twisted, hinterland incest; Fool for Love's catch-22 heartbreak; and A Lie of the Mind's public and self deception. The prose of Motel Chronicles, Cruising Paradise, Great Dream of Heaven, and Day of Days delves into these and other issues in a more personal way as Shepard uses accessible-yet-poetic descriptions to tell powerfully concise stories. This course asks students to write responses to, and present explications of, the week's play, film, or short-story cluster. They'll also be asked to produce a final project marrying short format writing with a piece of visual work in a medium of their choosing.