...by Arizona Theatre Company, through June 9 at Tempe Center for the Arts.
Showing posts with label SAM SHEPARD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAM SHEPARD. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
OUR VINES HAVE TENDER CREPES/RIP HDS
Check out the September issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...
...for Your Humble Narrator's "Four Corners" column on Valley creperies.
Still saddened by the departure, at 91, of Harry Dean Stanton.
I tend to remember him as the splenetic Bud in 1984's Repo Man--contrasting with Tracey Walter's serene, visionary Miller as the role models for Otto (Emilio Estevez)--but he was also Brain in Escape From New York and Brett in Alien and Asa Hawks in Wise Blood and Jerry in Straight Time and Travis in Paris, Texas and St. Paul in The Last Temptation of Christ and Molly Ringwald's Dad in Pretty in Pink and Richard Farnsworth's Brother in The Straight Story and Sam Shepard's Old Man in Fool for Love. And that's not to mention the earlier small roles he played in everything from Cool Hand Luke to The Godfather, Part II. And somehow, through all of these roles, what he really seemed best at was being his seriously one-of-a-kind self.
...for Your Humble Narrator's "Four Corners" column on Valley creperies.
Still saddened by the departure, at 91, of Harry Dean Stanton.
I tend to remember him as the splenetic Bud in 1984's Repo Man--contrasting with Tracey Walter's serene, visionary Miller as the role models for Otto (Emilio Estevez)--but he was also Brain in Escape From New York and Brett in Alien and Asa Hawks in Wise Blood and Jerry in Straight Time and Travis in Paris, Texas and St. Paul in The Last Temptation of Christ and Molly Ringwald's Dad in Pretty in Pink and Richard Farnsworth's Brother in The Straight Story and Sam Shepard's Old Man in Fool for Love. And that's not to mention the earlier small roles he played in everything from Cool Hand Luke to The Godfather, Part II. And somehow, through all of these roles, what he really seemed best at was being his seriously one-of-a-kind self.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
SAM HE WAS
Happy August everybody! The great Alice Cooper adorns the cover of...
...the August edition of Phoenix Magazine, on the stands now, but can he truly be the star of the issue when it also features my "Four Corners" column on Mediterranean restaurants around the Valley? It's also the 2017 "Best of the Valley" issue, and a bunch of these opinionated picks were penned by Your Humble Narrator as well (as in previous years, no prizes for guessing which).
A couple of RIPs: To voice acting giant June Foray, passed on two months shy of her hundredth birthday. She was the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha, Granny and Witch Hazel and Cindy Lou Who, among countless others. Any one of these would gain her admittance to the pantheon.
RIP also to Sam Shepard, passed on too young at 73. I saw his play The Unseen Hand performed outside in Ohio in 1984; one of my great theatrical experiences as an audience member. His work was so charged with beautiful language and hard but not ungenerous truths about America that it didn't matter when it was uneven or jaggedly constructed. He was a wonderful movie actor, too; I love him as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, and he didn't get enough credit for his commanding turn as the Ghost in Michael Almereyda's modern-dress Hamlet (2000).
In Shepard's honor...
Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week let's acknowledge the Bog Beast from his play Back Bog Beast Bait, first staged at the American Place Theatre in 1971. Here's the Beast, as depicted in a poster for a later regional production...
...but perhaps we'd do better to let Shepard's stage directions paint his picture: "He is just as Maria described him. Two heads like a pig, he snorts and spits, lights come from his eyes. His skin is covered with slimy green moss." Alas, he's as hapless as any Shepard character: when the other characters prove "oblivious of the beast's presence" he "...crosses downstage center and faces the audience. The action happens around him. Somehow the beast seems helpless and alone in the situation. He exits."
...the August edition of Phoenix Magazine, on the stands now, but can he truly be the star of the issue when it also features my "Four Corners" column on Mediterranean restaurants around the Valley? It's also the 2017 "Best of the Valley" issue, and a bunch of these opinionated picks were penned by Your Humble Narrator as well (as in previous years, no prizes for guessing which).
A couple of RIPs: To voice acting giant June Foray, passed on two months shy of her hundredth birthday. She was the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha, Granny and Witch Hazel and Cindy Lou Who, among countless others. Any one of these would gain her admittance to the pantheon.
RIP also to Sam Shepard, passed on too young at 73. I saw his play The Unseen Hand performed outside in Ohio in 1984; one of my great theatrical experiences as an audience member. His work was so charged with beautiful language and hard but not ungenerous truths about America that it didn't matter when it was uneven or jaggedly constructed. He was a wonderful movie actor, too; I love him as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, and he didn't get enough credit for his commanding turn as the Ghost in Michael Almereyda's modern-dress Hamlet (2000).
In Shepard's honor...
Monster-of-the-Week: ...this week let's acknowledge the Bog Beast from his play Back Bog Beast Bait, first staged at the American Place Theatre in 1971. Here's the Beast, as depicted in a poster for a later regional production...
...but perhaps we'd do better to let Shepard's stage directions paint his picture: "He is just as Maria described him. Two heads like a pig, he snorts and spits, lights come from his eyes. His skin is covered with slimy green moss." Alas, he's as hapless as any Shepard character: when the other characters prove "oblivious of the beast's presence" he "...crosses downstage center and faces the audience. The action happens around him. Somehow the beast seems helpless and alone in the situation. He exits."
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