Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance by Emma Creedon (review)

Emma Creedon’s Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance stands as a unique and important contribution to the vast scholarly material centered upon “the enfant terrible cowboy poet of the American stage” (xii). Creedon’s text attempts to light out into new territory, placing “Shepard’s plays within the context of the aesthetic and formal principles of Surrealism as a visual artistic movement” (xi). The volume carefully considers Shepard’s canon in connection to the writings of Antonin Artaud and Andre Breton as well as to the works of Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Dorothea Tanning and the films of Luis Buñuel.

The book, consisting of seven chapters and an introduction, expertly mines the vast scholarship on Shepard’s plays. The bibliography centered upon Shepard is exhaustive and noteworthy, while the bibliographic entries regarding Surrealism are equally as impressive, serving as an ideal reading list for those seeking connections between Surrealism and late twentieth-century theatre. In the introduction, Creedon notes that forging links between Shepard and Surrealism has not been the primary (or even secondary) aim of Shepard scholarship. Because Shepard’s “plays admittedly elude rigid categorization…academic criticism has been consistently reluctant to consider them under a Surrealist lens” (xii), especially as such an approach is complicated by Shepard’s public persona. Yet Creedon successfully excavates Shepard’s works and illuminates their dynamics in a radical method, using Surrealism as a wedge with which to open further understandings of the writer’s varied corpus. Indeed, her use of the visual arts to construct new perspectives on theatrical works serves as a model for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ventures located on the fault lines between the arts.

Chapter 1, entitled “Surrealism and Sam Shepard’s Early Plays: 1964–1967,” considers Shepard’s theatrical work as it grew “from exercises in the deliverance of uninhibited, uncensored thought” (xii). These plays, including Cowboys and The Rock Garden (both 1964), utilize imagism in a form that bridges Shepard’s work and Surrealism. Creedon substantiates such claims by highlighting the nodal points between these early writings and Salvador Dalí’s theory of “paranoiac-critical activity.” The following chapter, “Myth, Ritual, and a Search For Selfhood: 1969–1972,” concerns Shepard’s plays that possess “more discernible plot and narrative structure” (21) and tend to “betray an American postmodernist sensibility…rooted in Surrealism” (21). Many of the works from this period, such as The Unseen Hand (1969), Cowboy Mouth (1971, cowritten with Patti Smith), and The Tooth of Crime (1972), include explorations of selfhood and notions of identity. As an extension, these plays evoke the concept of “masks” as similarly employed by Alfred Jarry. Further, Creedon interpolates writings such as Artaud’s theories of ritual, Georges Bataille’s essay “The Absence of Myth,” and the concept of l’objet surréaliste to investigate these plays. Creedon yields fascinating results, including insight on Shepard’s resurrection of the ritual, the creation of the myth within the context of Surrealism, and the fascination with popular culture shared by both the Surrealists and Shepard. Creedon’s notion that Surrealism opens up a further understanding of the “in-between dimension” that performers occupy between self and role serves as further investigation of Shepard’s own insights regarding the interplay between performer and character. Creedon concludes that the characters’ ritualism within the plays is misplaced, as the works themselves mourn the loss of true myth and authenticity.

Chapter 3, “Surrealism and Sam Shepard’s Family Plays: Representing Gender,” covers writings such as Buried Child (1978) and A Lie of the Mind (1985). Shepard’s turn toward the domestic sphere finds a parallel in Surrealism, as the playwright’s artistic precursors found similar inspiration in the family as a way to explore identity and the cyclical nature of violence. In addition, Creedon finds further locations between the Surrealists and Shepard when she takes up the thorny issue of gender in these plays, examining the “accusations of misogyny directed” at...