2023–2024
True West
Playwright: Sam Shepard
September 14, 2023 – October 1, 2023
The Mainstage
About this play
Two brothers — Austin, a responsible screenwriter, and Lee, a drifting petty thief — meet at their mother's house outside Los Angeles while she is in Alaska. As Lee steals Austin's screenplay deal and Austin takes to drink and typewriter theft, the brothers inexorably swap identities, each destroying what the other represents. The play ends in a standoff that collapses the line between civilization and wilderness.
A volatile two-hander about sibling rivalry, identity, and the myth of the American West.
About the Playwright
Sam Shepard (born Samuel Shepard Rogers III; November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, author, and director. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for Buried Child and is widely considered one of the most important voices in American theatre. His plays are marked by mythic images of the American West, family dysfunction, and the collapse of the American Dream. He wrote more than 55 plays and received the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.