Sam Shepard

Latest Articles

Patti Smith: Dream of Life

An intimate, affectionate, non-linear visit
This collage of a documentary emanates from an 11-year collaboration between punk poet/rocker Patti Smith and her filmmaker friend Steven Sebring.
By GERALD PEARY | November 25, 2008

Tragic despair

Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind
A disturbing restlessness lies at the heart of Sam Shepard's rugged, dysfunctional American West. Men run off and then return, rebel and then cleave.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | November 12, 2008

Chilly scenes in winter

The year ahead on Boston stages
The drama of the holidays (and I don’t mean A Christmas Carol) may be behind us, but there’s plenty more drama — and comedy and musicals — ahead to light up long winter nights.
By LIZA WEISSTUCH | October 27, 2008

Running onward

Shepard’s Fool For Love at USM
Two doomed lovers meet — not for the first and surely not for the last time — in Sam Shepard’s dark romance of love and the American West, Fool For Love.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | October 09, 2008

Morality plays

It’s hard to escape politics this fall
The next six weeks of American life will be marked by a theatrical onslaught of ambition, contention, and colorful character development.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | September 10, 2008

New blood

ART and the Huntington (and Boston theater) get a youth transfusion
The famously adventurous American Repertory Theatre is soon to be taken over by a woman who spent her summer directing . . . the vintage Broadway hits Kiss Me, Kate and Hair ?
By CAROLYN CLAY | September 10, 2008

Dysfunction junctions

Spelling Bee in Beverly; The Goatwoman in Lenox
“Have you ever been in a gymnasium in the round before?” asks one of the participants toward the top of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at North Shore Music Theatre.
By CAROLYN CLAY | August 20, 2008

T Bone Burnett

Tooth of Crime (Second Dance) | Nonesuch
The follow-up to Burnett’s 2006 masterpiece The True False Identity (Sony) is a dark, cynical, vaguely futuristic song cycle triggered by a Sam Shepard play.
By TED DROZDOWSKI | May 27, 2008

Balloon moon

A Midsummer Night's Dream on Boston Common, plus Hunter Gatherers in Wellfleet
Sometimes less is more when imagination rules.
By CAROLYN CLAY | July 31, 2007

To Hell in a handbasket

The Wild Party; Confessions of a Mormon Boy; Buried Child
The epic poem The Wild Party is most famous for inspiring two musicals that appeared in the same millennial year.
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 01, 2007

Faith-based antics

Miss Witherspoon at the Lyric; Theresa at Home at BPT
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you took Comparative Religion and crack cocaine simultaneously, the answer may be Christopher Durang’s Miss Witherspoon .
By CAROLYN CLAY | March 27, 2007

From Bono to Blake

Patti Smith, Institute of Contemporary Art, February 21, 2007
At 60, Patti Smith remains something of an elder punk stateswoman.
By JIM SULLIVAN | February 27, 2007

Flights of angels

Wings of Desire takes the stage
In Wim Wenders’s iconic 1987 film Wings of Desire , the Berlin Wall is a character. In Ola Mafaalani’s theatricalization of the work for Toneelgroep Amsterdam and the American Repertory Theatre, the Fourth Wall is.
By CAROLYN CLAY | December 05, 2006

Art of darkness

on an average day is well above
If the New Testament were rewritten for modern times in language that included four-letter words and psychotic outbursts against the inscrutable will of God, the Good Book might read something like John Kolvenbach’s on an average day .
By IRIS FANGER | August 22, 2006