Sam Shepard: Seven Plays: Buried Child, Curse of the Starving Class, the Tooth of Crime, La Turista, Tongues, Savage Love, True West

I like to call this collection Best of Shepard Vol. 1. This collection belongs in any actors collection. Sam Shepard is a true, unique American voice. His eccentric characters, sparse writing and classic plays. I've seen "Buried Child" on-Broadway and scenes from "Buried Child", "Curse of the Starving Class", "Savage Love" and "True West" in countless acting classes. One of America's greatest writers.

This collection of plays is extraordinary. Shepard threads tales of cartoonlike characters bound by the direst of circumstances excellently.

Sam Shepard is an american original. I first encountered his work at the Public theater in NYC in the early to mid-70's. Then having seen Buried Child, i knew I had to read his work. His language is spare, tough and elagaic, like Cormac mcCarthy's novels of the southwest. The best work hee oare the first three plays: True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving class.Shepard is a poet of the interior,his convaluted families express despair over hideous personal tagiedies{Buried Child] or their own inability to love{True West]. Shepeard use of language is interesting. It is its strongest when it reflects the rhythm of a place or time,{curse of the Starving Class} and ,for me at least, is most evocative of a place either real or imagined,very much Shepard country.{I saw a young John Malkovich in a Shepard play} Now far better known for his acting{The right stuff, et, al],when Buried child first premiered, he was still a poet/playwrite living out west who refused to fly and who was commisioned by Bob Dylan to write a screenplay for his abortive Rolling Thunder Review movie, Renaldo and Clara...Brilliant,Blistering theatre,that has held up well these 20 years. A True American Master.HIghest possible Recommendation.

Simply really well written plays. True West and Curse of the Starving Class engrossed me the most, with True West bieng one of the best plays I have read. The words just flow naturally and the characters are *really* wierd but still consistent and round. Though I have not yet read all eight, it seems that most of his plays in here are very tough to perform. I always like plays with very few characters, or at least few actors, and the only play that really fits that is True West. He is obviously used to writing for film, since sometimes he puts things into his plays that are really hard to actually do on stage. Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but I think that some of these plays are pretty hard to produce.Still, it makes for an excellent read and I also found it kind of inspiring, since these are really good plays that I felt flowing into my mind rather than just reading them (yes, I *know* that sounds really cheesy...)

These are the best dark comedy plays I have ever seen. The true west is a work of art. All of these plays are top of the line. Dark comedy at it's best. If you are an actor, or just interested in the arts I suggest this book. You won't find this many well written plays in one book in a long time. Sam Shepard is a true genius.