Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance

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.

"If your interests are in how the output of an immensely talented and noted playwright reflects and also shapes the geist of his age, then welcome to Emma Creedon's analysis. ... Sam Shepard and The Aesthetics of Performance is an easy read. ... Emma Creedon's intensely researched work will prove enormously stimulating and thought-enhancing if one takes the time to consider the movement of a writer within streams of cultural influences." (Hubert O'Hearn, sandiegobookreview.com, January, 2016) "In this book, Creedon provides an invaluable service to students of Shepard's work. Her learned evocation of a Surrealist context within which to situate and read Shepard's plays, early and late, produces truly significant insights, particularly into the visual elements of his theatre." - Stephen Watt, Indiana University Bloomington, USA "Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance is an engaging, insightful, and beautifully argued study of selected Shepard plays. Exploring the Surrealist textures within the plays, and Shepard's ongoing search for the Real, Creedon makes a valuable and original contribution to the field. This is a solid piece of scholarship, one that is essential reading for those interested in Sam Shepard and the contemporary stage." - Matthew Roudane, Georgia State University, USA

• 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