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Topic: True West (play)

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	Nathaniel West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		West's tight style, however, is surprisingly well-suited to a short opus: his strength is in the vivid phrase, and there are examples of ingenious phrase-making in almost all of the newly collected material (including that college essay).
		West's devotion to exaggerated normality led him naturally to humor, satire, and the grotesque, but his sensibility also admitted an uncommonly generous sympathy for the weak, particularly the sick and the pretentious.
		West does not emphasize what he once called "the vicious, mean, ugly, obscene, and insane" at the expense of gentler feelings, however; his method is to exaggerate sincerity, maximizing its effect.
	www.bostonphoenix.com /archive/books/97/08/07/NATHANIEL_WEST.html (911 words)

	True West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The play explores the brothers’ competitiveness, and is meant to show how each brother’s role defines the other’s, how they are really both the same beneath the surface, and how they depend on one another.
		At the beginning of the play, Austin is researching and writing a Hollywood script, a period love story that he has been trying to close the deal on for months.
		True West is one of my favorite plays, and I am curious to see what the actors do with the roles in reverse.
	www.nytheatre.com /nytheatre/true2227.htm (1176 words)

	Sam Shepard and Identity
		The play True West was first staged at San Francisco's Magic Theatre in the summer of 1980, and can be read as one of Shepard's most poignant inquiries into the ironic process of working both in the film industry (he had recently appeared in the critically acclaimed film, Days of Heaven) and as a playwright.
		Clearly present in True West is this sort of tension between the surface appearance of a sort of middle-class-America Eden and its inherent emptiness.
		True West is a drama set within the inner landscape of the author, his characters playing out his most violent and contradictory compulsions.
	xroads.virginia.edu /~MA95/blackbrn/twest.html (1870 words)

	True West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Reading Sam Shepherd's "True West," I was particularly struck by the use of physical props to emphasize the themes of the play.
		Thus, when in the crisis of the play when the brothers are at odds with one another, the neglect of the plants mirrors their own decayed relationship.
		However, by the end of the play the stage is littered with debris and trash, which goes far to visually reinforce the play's theme of the breaking down of order.
	faculty.rmwc.edu /lstreet/eng261s02/0000001f.htm (397 words)

	Title goes here. (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		True West is one of a trilogy of Shepard plays that represent dysfunctional family relationships.
		Shepard is known for his exploration of the death of the American family, and True West is certainly one such exploration that focuses on the relationship between two seemingly opposite brothers.
		Shepard's plays are also known for their physical and emotional violence—characters often react to one another with violent outbursts.
	occawlonline.pearsoned.com /bookbind/pubbooks/barnettod_abl/chapter98/medialib/true.html (186 words)

	South Coast Repertory Play Insights - 'True West'
		In that vein, True West is partly about the mythology of the American West and its degradation at the hands of pop culture; but even more it chronicles a high-noon showdown between two halves of a divided psyche that Shepard claims as his own.
		The energy of these plays came from Shepard's muscular language and his grasp of theatre's essence: the immediacy of the live event and its power to act on multiple sensory levels, to appeal to both emotions and intellect.
		With Curse of the Starving Class (1978), Buried Child (1979), True West (1980) and A Lie of the Mind (1985), he found a way to wrench the traditional family play into startling new territory.
	www.scr.org /season/99-00season/snl.99-00/snlss1.html (1083 words)

	Wildly watchable 'True West' explores battle of brothers
		As for the "new boys" -- and "True West" is all about the relationship between a pair of brothers -- they don't miss a beat.
		At once pitch fl and deadly comic, "True West" may not be a great play, but it is a hugely entertaining, wildly actable one.
		Looming large in the background, yet unseen -- as is often the case in Shepard's plays -- is the brothers' father, a broken alcoholic who also lives on the desert in a state of advanced decay.
	www.suntimes.com /output/entertainment/cst-ftr-true20.html (691 words)

	Theatre Review - True West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Sam Shepherd is certainly among the most remarkable American playwrights of our half of the twentieth century, and True West, his riff on sibling rivalry, the values of Hollywood, and life in the desert of the human spirit, among other things, is among his quirkiest and most effective plays.
		When the actors playing the two brothers, screenwriter and ivy league grad Austin and neer-do-well and sometime-criminal Lee, are physically evenly matched, the play's energy flows back and forth between them, with neither dominant either physically or emotionally.
		It is hard to play a drunk without making a pastiche of it, and it is hard to give the appearance of doing serious injury to someone on stage without actually doing it; both skills are required by Shepherd's script, and the cast of this production could have used more rehearsal on both.
	www.kdhx.org /reviews/truewest.html (373 words)

	True West Summary & Essays - Sam Shepard
		His popularity broadened and by the time True West appeared in 1980, many critics felt that Shepard was at the forefront of new American playwrights and, along with other dramatists such as David Mamet, Marsha Norman, and Beth Henley, was defining a new decade of theatre.
		While True West represents a continued movement in Shepard's drama toward realistic charactenzation, plot, setting, and dialogue, the play also has touchstones in his experimental days, retaining a number of unusual, fantastical elements—such as the grotesque violence and the startling transformations of its two main characters.
		In many circles True West was hailed as a breakthrough for Shepard, a work in which experimental drama was successfully melded with the more conventional elements of modern theatre.
	www.enotes.com /true-west (407 words)

	True West
		True West were one of the first of the psychedelic revival bands, and one of the hippest.
		What separated True West from them was the fact that a “big guitar band” is all they ever wanted to be.
		True West existed simply to play their music, and very well.
	www.geocities.com /SunsetStrip/Underground/2507/truewest.html (1070 words)

	ORANGE COUNTY WEEKLY OC Weekly: Theater: An Indelicate Balance (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		That’s not just because the play is set in a suburban neighborhood some 40 miles east of Los Angeles, or because Mojave Desert dust coats the action, or because the wasteland’s coyotes call the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains home.
		By play’s end, when the stage is littered with toasters (which were stolen during a drunken predawn spree) and the remnants of Mom’s kitchen (after Austin rages, unable to find a pencil to write down a number of some skank in Bakersfield), the audience is nearly as exhausted as the actors must be.
		There are three main themes in True West: the duality of human nature, the battle within the creative process between rationality and intuition, and what the authentic West really is. Shepard shoehorns these dense themes into the personalities of the two brothers.
	www.ocweekly.com /ink/99/42/theater-beers.php (1198 words)

	'True West': An Odd Couple of Violence and Humor (washingtonpost.com)
		The sibling rivalry portrayed in Sam Shepard's "True West" is bitter and violent -- and often played for laughs.
		In director Susan Marie Rhea's staging of "True West" at the Keegan Theatre, however, the emphasis is so heavily on the humor that not only is Shepard's deeper message about identity undermined, but the tone of the production ends up feeling muddled as the brothers' reunion goes further south.
		At times, such as in the play's famous toaster scene (Austin responds to Lee's dismissal that he doesn't have the know-how to steal even a toaster by lifting about a dozen of them from neighboring homes), the silliness works.
	www.washingtonpost.com /wp-dyn/articles/A11923-2004Nov25.html (665 words)

	The Austin Chronicle Arts: Exhibitionism
		These guys, whose differing orbits never completely remove them from the gravity of their alcoholic fuck-up of a father, meet in the bright clean kitchen of their mother's house where Austin is holding down the fort while Mom goes on a cruise to Alaska.
		Jeff Cunningham has designed a highly realistic kitchen for the play, a kitchen increasingly trashed by the rivaling sibs as they confront each other over their life choices, their relationship with the wastoid patriarch, and various real or imagined antagonisms.
		Peter Malof plays Saul-the-producer to the Hollywood hilt, all glad-handedly self-directed and as brightly surfaced as Corian, his annoying laugh (brought out, we assume, by director Kim Travis) is just short of incredible and a kind of character unto itself.
	www.austinchronicle.com /issues/dispatch/2002-04-12/arts_exhibitionism.html (637 words)

	SparkNotes: True West: Analysis of Major Characters
		As True West begins Austin is doing a little "research" for a screenplay he is writing, too bashful to admit that something he is working on might approach the level of art.
		Lee is the most constantly surprising and vivid characters in the play, and the catalyst for most the action and the laugh track as well.
		The old man, though out in the desert and never appearing in the play, exerts a much more profound influence over the brothers than Mom does even when she is present in the destroyed kitchen.
	www.sparknotes.com /drama/truewest/canalysis.html (1001 words)

	Sam Shepard (1943- )
		In Cowboys, two buddies play what seems to be a game of cowboys and indians, re-enacting key episodes from Western mythology--episodes which lead to decay, stasis, and the apparent death of one of the characters.
		Their duel to the death is not a gun battle, but a rap session in which each musician uses verbal incantations in order to pierce the mask and shatter the confidence of his opponent.
		The plays written from this point on feature a somewhat more realistic style, although they retain devices of disturbing and imaginative surrealism such as the absent-but-present father who is able to confer with the son and daughter who have conjured him up in Fool for Love (1982).
	www.imagi-nation.com /moonstruck/clsc41.html (407 words)

	Sex Change [Sam Shepard won't allow a cast of women, instead of men, in his play "True West"]
		This week a representative of Samuel French Inc., the publishing house that issued the contract for the play, left a message for Thomas Hays, the producer, saying that it was unacceptable to cast women in the play's male roles.
		True West is a great play-- one of my all time favorites.
		Someone once told me that play was originally written for three gay men, but, fearing the public at that time would never accept three gay men in those three catty roles, a decision was made to make the play about three women.
	www.freerepublic.com /focus/fr/1096561/posts (1006 words)

	Gary Sinise - True West
		Synopsis: The third of Sam Shepard's "family" plays, "True West" is uncharacteristically traditional in its structure, but typically over the top in its story and style.
		The play's encounter between the brothers explores the duality of human personality, and our primal capacity for violence.
		"True West" also holds a special place in Steppenwolf Theatre Co. history - it was the first time the company brought a production to the New York stage.
	sinisefans.org /truwest (127 words)

	Show Business Weekly: Review: True West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		It is a scene that is at once ridiculous and tragic, as the two brothers writhe murderously on the floor while their mother casually decides to stay in a motel that night.
		Kjeldsen, whose background is grounded mostly in screenwriting rather than acting, is not as convincing as his counterpart with many of his temper tantrums and body movements seeming transparent and contrived.
		They seem to really understand the inner-workings of their characters, and are able to translate the mixed feelings of admiration and jealousy, brotherly love and sibling rivalry into the relationship.
	www.showbusinessweekly.com /archive/209/true_west.shtml (626 words)

	Melissa's Review of True West
		Phil plays Austin, the screenwriter son who comes to his mothers house to take care of it while she goes to Alaska (I think to "find herself, but it's not made clear).
		He has been in the desert living for the past few months, and has come to see his mother, not really knowing she wasn't going to be there.
		The rest plays on their relationship (or lack thereof) Austin is there trying to write that "one great screenplay", and Lee is in the way.
	ddraven.tripod.com /psh/meltruew.html (613 words)

	True West (play) Definition / True West (play) Research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The play is a more traditional narrative than the usual Shepard play.
		True West was first performed at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco on July 10, 1980.
		[click for more] and John C. Reilly played the leads on BroadwayBroadway, as the name implies, is a large, wide avenue in New York City, New York, and is one of the oldest main north-south thoroughfares in the city, dating back to the first Dutch New Amsterdam settlement.
	www.elresearch.com /True_West_%28play%29 (430 words)

	2001 Reviews: Billy Budd, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), True West, Annie Mae's Movement, Closer, Idomeneo, ...
		He does not, for instance, play up the homoerotic subtext in the relations of the three main characters, but he does allow us to perceive it as a subtext, just as it is in the novella and in the libretto.
		Her character is the centre of the play both because her arrival in London precipitates the action and because she is the one who has most clearly created a tough persona to protect her confused inner self.
		In the first play the young man Jacques is pressured to accept his family's values as represented first by their love of potatoes with lard and second by their desire for him to marry.
	www.stage-door.org /reviews/misc2001b.htm (10158 words)

	West 8 Stockton 15 \|\| Official West Hartlepool RFC - The Official website of West Hartlepool - Official. News and ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Stockton, who were hardly playing quality rugby, extended their lead after 25 minutes with a try from flanker Brett Wildridge who was in support of a bullocking run from Jon Buddington.
		Unfortunately the slight improvement in West’s play in the second half was balanced out by the inconsistency of the officiating at the breakdown.
		Davy Tighe gave West hope after 65 minutes with a penalty from the 22 and it looked like to comeback could be on when Andrew Hare went over in the corner and ran round to touch down under the posts only to see the Stockton officials flag raised for a foot in touch.
	www.sportnetwork.net /main/s16/st67454.htm?fromrss=1 (1172 words)

	Printer Friendly Version - 'West' not quite the 'Truest' (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Willis is a big star, and attaching his name to "True West" is all that's needed to draw viewers to the special airing at 8 p.m.
		That's a tougher call, because in the generation after Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams did their best work, "True West" stands as an intense and intimate play that deserves to be staged often, as one of its era's best.
		The most famous production of "True West," performed by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company and taped for PBS' "American Playhouse" in 1984, presented two unknown actors in the roles of wild Lee and tame Austin: John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, with Sinise directing.
	www.nydailynews.com /entertainment/v-pfriendly/story/10117p-9551c.html (499 words)

	True West (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The end of the play left me emotionally drained: I was simply exhausted by the constant reversal of Austin and Lee's characters (that accompanies their change in fortune) thoroughout the play.
		She seemed out of place in the play, as rest of the character seem more lifelike.
		Her appearence, with the violence that follows her arrival, bring to the play such a diffrent tone of atmosphere that it is like presenting a whole new concept at the conclusion of a paper.
	faculty.rmwc.edu /lstreet/eng261s02/00000024.htm (278 words)

	PortlandTribune.com \| On Stage: Nuevo West
		In “True West,” a gritty comedy by actor and playwright Sam Shepard, brothers Austin and Lee reminisce about old times, lay waste to their mother’s house and lunge at each other’s throats.
		Chris Coleman, artistic director of Portland Center Stage, says, “I wasn’t interested in doing ‘True West’ in a way that it had been done before.” He came up with the idea of staging “True West” with a Latino cast while holding auditions for last season’s “Flesh and Blood,” a play about a Greek-American family.
		Three of the play’s four characters — Austin, Lee and their mother — are played by Latino actors.
	www.portlandtribune.com /archold.cgi?id=14393 (994 words)

	City Pages - Theater of Cruelty
		His younger brother, here played by Peter Hansen, is by comparison a nebulous slip of a man--given to suffering in silence as his attempts to complete a writing project are endlessly interrupted by Jackson.
		If there is a point to this production of True West, and I believe there is one, it is that the smart bottom should press his whip into the hand of a meek, exhausted-looking writer and close his eyes in preparation for the orgy of violence to follow.
		It's the sort of play Oscar Wilde would have written had somebody struck him on the head with a large hammer, dulling the part of his brain that made him really witty and sharp, but leaving a modicum of his charm and cattiness.
	www.citypages.com /databank/21/1023/article8813.asp (1421 words)

	Drama: Sam Shepard (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Suicide in B-flat (1976) and True West (1980) only made it clearer that his work was developing in a consistent vein of fl humor and dark criticism of the sanctity of family life.
		The play is set in the West and contains all the themes for which his work is known.
		If the American West has a reality that survived its mythicization in the dime novel and John Wayne's movies, then Shepard is partly responsible for the way we now see it.
	www.bedfordstmartins.com /litlinks/drama/shepard.htm (560 words)

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