Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance, 2015 What is Theatre? Series

By concentrating on Sam Shepard's visual aesthetics, Emma Creedon argues that a consideration of Shepard's plays in the context of visual and theoretical Surrealism illuminates our understanding of his experimental approach to drama.

Introduction 1. Surrealism and Sam Shepard's Early Plays: 1964 1967 2. Myth, Ritual and a Search for Selfhood: Surrealism in Sam Shepard's Plays from 1969 to 1972 3. Sam Shepard's Family Plays and the Representation of Gender 4. A Comparative Study of Sam Shepard's Angel City (1976) and Luis Buñuel's and Salvador Dalí's Un chien andal ou (1929) 5. Tongues (1978), Savage/Love (1979) and The War in Heaven: Angel's Monologu e (1985): Joseph Chaikin and Sam Shepard in Collaboration 6. States of Shock (1991) and Simpatico (1994): Performances of Waste 7. Conclusion: Through the 1990s and Beyond

Emma Creedon has lectured at University College Dublin, Ireland and the National University of Ireland, Galway. She has also worked as a playwright and theatre director and her work has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English and Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics. Dr. Creedon was awarded her PhD from University College Dublin.