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Starting Gate Productions presents... Sibling rivalry of mythic proportions. A showdown between brothers for dominance and understanding injects this brutal comedy with the tension of a gunfight. March 23 - April 15, 2007Fridays - Saturdays at 7:30pmSunday Matinees at 2:00pm PLEASE NOTE: THERE ARE NO LONGER THURSDAY EVENING PERFORMANCES Audio Described Performance - Sunday, April 8, 2007 Pay What You Want - Monday, April 2, 2007 (7:30) All Performances are at the Mounds Theatre in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood just east of downtown Saint Paul. Tickets are $18 general, $16 students and seniors. Call for tickets 651-645-3503 Directed by: Bryan Bevell Stage Manager: Katie Oliver Featuring the Talents of: Press SectionThoughts from the Director:When taking on an iconic work such as Sam Shepard’s True West, it seems to me that the director has a dual obligation. Firstly, the production should embody all those elements for which the play is known and celebrated. True West is probably the best-known play by one of America’s greatest, most innovative, least compromising dramatists. Those familiar with this play will come to it expecting to find its trademark qualities intact: the abundant rough humor, the pulsing tension, the looming threat, the stunning role reversals – and, of course, lots and lots of toasters. So, getting it right is important. But even more importantly, a production such as this needs a reason for being – a fresh approach, something that answers the basic questions why this play and why now. True West came at the pinnacle of one of the most explosive creative outpourings ever by an American playwright. Between 1966 and 1980 Sam Shepard wrote more than forty plays – the bulk of his output exceeded only by its stunning originality. In the course of those years Shepard’s writing style went from wildly experimental, seeming random exercises to sturdy, taut, quasi-realistic dramas. One could make a strong argument that True West is the sturdiest, tightest, most realistic Shepard play of all. But, though it is imperative that this play look and feel “real”, to focus entirely on the “realism” in True West is to lose sight of the mythic scope of Shepard’s characters and themes. I believe True West is, in many respects, the culmination of Shepard’s long formative period through the sixties and seventies. It is here that many of the ideas and obsessions that dominate all of Shepard’s early work achieve an almost crystalline expression. The bland suburban trappings of the play are at odds with the irreconcilable forces doing battle on stage. The central figures, two brothers named Austin and Lee, are less contrasting siblings than they are equal and opposite (yet mutually dependant) energies – what critic Stanley Kauffman called “opposing but matching components of one human nature.” The sense one should get from watching True West is of a modern day version of Hector and Achilles locked in perpetual combat in some nondescript kitchen on the outer fringes of suburban Los Angeles – an image both gripping and hilarious. Now in his sixties, Sam Shepard is still a force in American drama. But the time seems right for a re-evaluation of his body of work to acknowledge Shepard’s place alongside O’Neill, Williams and Miller in the pantheon of Great American Dramatists. What better way to begin to fully appreciate this American Master than with a look back at this most Shepardesque play. Bryan Bevell TALKING POINTS Bryan Bevell has directed "Lobby Hero" at Jungle Theater and "Sea Wolf" for Hardcover Theatre. He recently directed and produced "Gangster No. 1." We welcome Bob Malos and Gus Lynch's Starting Gate debut. Promotional Photos Photos featuring Bob Malos and Gus Lynch. Download the photo in High Res JPEG format below or on the picture. Right Click and select Save As: Photos by John Autey |
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