2023 Cond Nast. Afraid of sound. The play alludes to the golden age of motoring when Ella's prized Packard is mentioned, and also blown up, which signifies the . The production had original live rock, blues, jazz, punk, and Latin-style music, composed and arranged by Steve Bargonetti and Diane Gioia. Then softly crying. She first tries to run away by taking the family horse, but it throws her off and drags her through the mud, so she comes back. But is it even possible, at this point? The conventions of dialogue in the play again present this mixture. Weston tells Ella to let Emma go and then there is a bright flash and a loud explosion from outside. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Weston stumbles in, even drunker, and wants to know where Ella is. 0. Shepard, though, does not define the familys curse just as a disease, though; this curse is more historical and supernatural, like the curses that afflicted the great families of Greek tragedy. I could feel myself in my bed in my room in this house in this town in this state in this country. Cobwebs moving with them. DeRose, David J., Sam Shepard, Twayne, 1992. But Shepard retains the symbolic structure of his earlier plays. Curse of the Starving Class premiered Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival, on March 2, 1978, presented by Joseph Papp. The tom cat and the eagle start fighting in midair, with the cat clawing out the eagle's chest, and the eagle trying to drop it. Whole body crashing. Wesley tells Weston that his creditors are going to kill him. . He tells the children that he has found a buyer for the house, and Emma leaves abruptly. At first, Weston can't remember who all he has loaned money to, and begins to rant about how this is his home and nobody ought to be able to take it from him because he has nowhere else to go. Try it today! Conservatives, however, decry feminism, blaming it for rising divorce rates and what they see as a breakdown of the nuclear family. First gear grinding. Ages 12-17: Camp Broadway Ensemble @ Carnegie Hall. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Taylor leaves, and Wesley yells at the policeman to arrest him for being a confidence man. Eder, Richard, Theatre: The Starving Class, in New York Daily News, March 3, 1978, p. C4. He tells her that as he put them on he could feel his own essence slipping out of him, and his father's essence coming into him. 28 Feb. 2023 , Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Dogs barking down the road. Wesleys monologue is like the steady tapping of rain on a windowpane: melancholy and constant. From a mile off I could tell it was the Packard by the sound of the valves. Lights go off. Ella, his mother, enters and they begin to discuss the events of the night before that lead to Wesley's father, Weston, breaking down the door. No answer. Emma then yells down that she is going to take the horse and leave. The laundry is still on the table; a pot of artichokes boils on the stove. 2003 eNotes.com Him just sitting in the car. Mom screaming for police. In the night. Word Count: 1160. Kauffmann, Stanley. Sergeant Malcolm from the police department enters and tells Ella that Emma has been arrested for riding a horse into the Alibi Club and shooting the place full of holes. The Word Is My Shepard. In New American Dramatists, 1960-1980. Ella goes downtown to get Emma out of jail. When: what time period Where: city and state. He then suggests that they move away to some place safe, like Alaska. No sound. What he didnt know then, but worked out in glorious play after play, once hed found his vocation, was why, amid all the waste and destruction, a boys heart would still beat faster whenever his father drove up the road, a father confused about his family and his effect on them, lost to any idea of love, trying to catch dreams at the bottom of a bottle. Ed. As Wesley and Ella argue, Ella speaks of the curse she sees operating on the family. Peacocks. Or are some families, Shepherd asks, just cursed before they begin? Results may vary. This act opens with Weston, who is now clean, and sober. In a way, Weston plays his role as a father perfectly: what would the patriarchy be without chest thumping? Emerson is a minor character who represents the men that Weston is in debt to. Wesley tells her, when she asks if he is going to take over the role of Daddy Bear, that he feels himself becoming his father, that as he put on Westons clothes, he could feel something growing on him. Malcolm enters and informs the family that Emma has been arrested for riding her horse through the Alibi Club and shooting up the bar. Man going insane. I could feel the headlights closing in. Ella falls asleep on the table and Wesley, dressed in Westons old clothes, enters. eNotes.com eNotes.com, Inc. Emma, by way of contrast, often shouts her lines from offstage. Their daughter, Emma, is a smart and rebellious teen, itching to get away from her crazy home. Its themes include the struggle for dignity, moral obligations to family members, and the effect of money in America. publication online or last modification online. As she leaves, Ella wakes up, mistakes Wesley for Weston, and tells him to go after Emma because she's too young to leave on her own. Weston enters, even drunker than he was before. The playwright Sam Shepards matter-of-fact observations about where his characters stand in the world tell us so much about the world they inhabit. Our Essay Lab can help you tackle any essay assignment within seconds, whether youre studying Macbeth or the American Revolution. The second date is today's My heart was pounding. Oumano, Ellen. Beaufort, John, Off-Broadway: Tale of a Blighted Family, in Christian Science Monitor, March 3, 1978. Below are five dramatic monologues for women of various ages, pulled from a wide variety of sourceseverything from a Sam Shepard play to HBO's "Succession.". Monologues for Females: THAT DAY (adapted from Inside/Out by Michael Scanlon). Theres a moment in Curse when a character says, after an exchange about enemy territory, Were all white, arent we? It passes so quickly that you might not hear it, but its there, in a script that was first produced when Shepard was only thirty-three and the theatre world was decades away from being woke. Thats what I treasure about Shepard: his matter-of-fact observations about where his characters stand in the worldobservations that also tell us so much about the world they inhabit. Even all the sleeping animals. 1. I could feel the presence of all the people outside, at night, in the dark. weve done it again! Ella is on stage alone for the beginning of the talk, but her daughter, Emma, walks on stage mid-talk and joins the conversation as though she has been there all along. Soon, the music is interrupted by a great rumble, and the kitchen walls break in half. Man throwing wood. Directed by Robin Lynn Smith, the cast featured Kathy Bates (Ella) and Bradley Whitford (Wesley). Joseph Chaikin & Sam Shepard May 18 2022 Friends since 1964, correspondents since 1972, playwright Sam Shepard and director Joseph Chaikin established . On the other hand, all the members of the family, except for Ella, are given long monologues which are almost soliloquies. Weston exits and Emma enters. The three of them converse tensely until Ella enters. As she speaks, her daughter, Emma enters and joins the conversation in progress. If you buy something through one of these links, we may earn an affiliate commission at no additional cost to you. He is uninterested in the other crimes that Wesley and Ella accuse Taylor and Ellis of, stating that he is only there to tell Ella about Emma. Word Count: 89. Sam Shepard. It is morning. "Curse of the Starving Class - The Play" Survey of Dramatic Literature When: what time period Where: city and state. He tells Wesley and Emma that he has already purchased the house from Weston and shows them the cash. Ella, in curlers, wearing a bathrobe, is angry with Weston for having broken the door during the night, but brightens at finding bread and bacon in the refrigerator. Emma walks out. Some foreigner. 1970s: In Los Angeles, suburbanization continues unabated. Wesley enters and they discuss Weston's laundry and the best way to help the lamb with the maggots. Ella wakes up, and a huge explosion offstage follows upon this. Kaufmann, Stanley, What Price Freedom? in New Republic, April 8, 1978, pp. To help, she has some suggestions for fantastic dramatic monologues for child actors. [6], The play was produced at Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, in February 2000, directed by Jim Simpson and featuring Kristine Nielsen, Guy Boyd, Mandy Siegfried, Danny Seckel, Paul Boocock, Ron Faber, Steve Mellor, Dan Moran and Chime Serra. Wesley then explains to Emma that it is not typical homebuyers who are going to purchase the house, but that it is land developers. Ella leaves with Taylor, telling Wesley to take the lamb with the maggots back outside. There are three acts. Lyons, Charles R., Shepards Family Trilogy and the Conventions of Modern Realism, in Rereading Shepard, edited by Leonard Wilcox, St. Martins Press, 1993. Note: When citing an online source, it is important to include all necessary dates. Hart, Lynda, Sam Shepards Metaphorical Stages, Greenwood Press, 1987. Emma and Wesley keep opening the fridge and looking for something thats not therea crystal ball filled with absence. professional theatre, regional theatre, university / college theatre, community theatre, Ages 12-17: Camp Broadway Ensemble @ Carnegie Hall. This play cannot be decoded as an allegory in which we can reduce the refrigerator to a representation of spiritual hunger, the lamb to a representation of sacrifice and innocence, and the door to a representation of the barrier between the family and the outside world. After this outburst he passes out. WESLEY keeps cleaning up the debris, ignoring her. Sam Shepard's coming of age drama about a dirt-poor 1950's-era farm family. If Noel Cowards character were chic and elegant then Sams were real rootless and raw and I like it! Weston tells Wesley that he got up early and took a walk around the house and decided he wanted to stay, so he cleaned up, bought food, made a huge breakfast, and did all of the laundry. Another risk in weak productions of Shepards work is that directors will make too little or too much of his surrealism. The refrigerator is the focal point of the action; each member of the family is obsessed with its emptiness. In her attempt to steal the car, she is blown up with the car by the bomb that Slater puts in it. In the fridge, she finds some bacon and bread and, as she fries up the last of the familys meat, Wesley thinks about himself and his father and recalls a memory: I was lying there on my back. Upgrade to PRO Hes woken up with dew on the hood before. *Our system only provides suggested monologues or songs for select characters if we have matching monologues and song information in our database. absolutely zero! Ella tries to take the money from Wesley, but he tells her there is not enough to go to Europe on. They finish the story, saying that a tom cat had come to sniff around in the testes and the eagle picked it up. I could hear stock cars squealing down the street. Weston yells at him, telling him that they didn't need the food, because the refrigerator is full for once. "Curse of the Starving Class - Bibliography" Great Characters in Literature Ella looks at the carcass, remembering Westons story of the eagle. Finally, highway patrolman Malcolm appears with the news that Emma, having shot up the Alibi Club, is in jail. Disease and sickness, and images of a poison circulating through the blood, complement the motif of inside/outside. Sign up today to unlock amazing theatre resources and opportunities. At times, Wesley loses patience with his family members, as evidenced by his lack of sympathy for his sister's ruined 4-H project, to which he responds by urinating on her charts and suggesting that his sister do something truly useful with her time. She and Weston argue heatedly. Vol. Once she is arrested she says that she gains her freedom by offering sexual bribes to the sheriff. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. The Tate family is a lower middle class, rural California family, trying to hold on to the last shreds of a family bond and traditional living. Wesley embarks upon a long monologue narrating the events of the previous night before leaving, at which point Ella begins talking to nobody in particular about the start of menstruation. Mom crying soft. Word Count: 509. Later, she becomes so angry about Ellis buying their house, she rides the family horse into his bar and shoots the place full of holes. Michael and me -- well, we're closer than most brothers and sisters. Emma and Wesley discuss whether their mother will come back, or whether she will run off to Mexico with Taylor. New York, NY, Accessibility Statement Terms Privacy |StageAgent 2020. Like several of Shepard's plays, Cures of the Starving Class explores family dysfunction in Western America. Vol. While Ella takes steps to get away by trying to sell the old homestead, through a lawyer named Taylor (Andrew Rothenberg), Wesley cant imagine his life as anything other than what it is: he moves and speaks as if bewitched by the awfulness; his existence is a Daddy-dominated dream. User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights conservatives however. Circulating through the blood, complement the motif of inside/outside another risk in weak of! 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