March, 1967 La Turista Obie Trip to Mexico in summer 1965 at the Hotel Nacionale in Oaxaca and sick and plane paranoia. At the American Place dedicated to developing from staged readings to full prod. Lowells (Eliz. Hardwick's husband) Old Glory in '64. Shep's first play outside the Village. Starts with one act of a three act play and ends with a single act drastically different from both the first act the two writes of the second act he'd discarded. Critics not invited after their mean coments on Cowboys that almost sent him packing. An opetion(?) at American place. Eliz. Hardwick in The New York Review of Books on the audience...published by Bobbs-Merrill 1968 jacket cover. Not linear but shifting character, time stopping monologues; visual imagery.
Waterson on acting: Shep has no psych background, the character "just does it," a reality of its own no need for a linear connection to regular reality. A collaborative thing.
"Shepard was very intense, very uncharted, unprogrammed and therefore unpredictable...I thought of him as a playwright and a very interesting man."
Early plays tied to the time, the circumstances and specific prefers, to get far from these conditions is to find a cryptic play. Compare to Auto bio Art/Jarry trad.
Performance art, happenings, coterie in the moment.
"You get a certain spontaneous freaky thing if you write real fast."
Ellen Stewert paid Shep to serve coffee. She gave him a room to write and play drums.
On music and the Holy Modal Rounders. An experimental and multitalented personality. Steve Weber's pre WWII Blues and Peter Stampfel's Pre WWII country moutain acid country pre WWII black and white music put together the Fugs first backing band between Dec. '64-Jun. '65 and our first record was made the day before Kennedy was shot. How Stampfel and Shep meet in 1966. Swamp Willies/Lillies which turned into the Moray Eels and the Heavy Metal Kid.
1967 ESP records Indian War Whoop -Floyd Ming and His Pepsteppers. Shep plays drums but is not on the cover because he had a crew cut in reaction to all the long hairs coming into the village.
Rounders motto: If it doesn't make you feel horny it's not art."1967 Summer of Love and Shep dislike and his crew cut and not on.
1967 Rockefeller Grant-buys a Fender Stratocaster and a Dodge Charger one hundred a week for five weeks but before that no money.
Shep on writing as a job like working ten hours a day cleaning hourseshit out of a stable.
"Motherly muse, respected his integrity and helped him get grants. One of the great agents...She as a kind of 30's radical who represented almost anybody you could think of who had any substance of any kind politically or socially or as an artist. Sam adored her." Poland.
Bobbs-Merrill publishes Five Plays.
Toby Cole- editor Actors on, etc.
Meets Bill Hart on Sixth Ave. and Prince St. through Aron in Pa. Chaikin asks for Shep to leave his apartment and stay with Hart. Directs Shaved Splits, Cowboys #2 and later States of Shock. On a movie he did with Shep Aron Mingus becomes part of Motel Chronicles.
The Farm -an abandoned dairy farm near Strasburg PA where Theatre Genesis would hang out. Mednick and Barsha and the Vision Piece or Body Piece communal with structure and then actor putting the dialogue in like a more intimate Paradise. Now Barsha says he was going with O-Lan at the time that Shep met her.
Sam wasn't such a good actor but he had such an energetic personality.
May 1967 Melodrama Play (Europe tour) at La Mama with Melfi Times Square titles from W. Coast acid bands.
Shepard on "flip outs running around the Lower East side." "I didn't use drugs to write. I only used drugs to live." Rolling Stone Interview.
Drums with the Moral Eels also with Stampfel with titles like "Black Leather Swamp Nazi".
Antonioni who drove across the US in Spring of 1967.
May 18, 1967 Melodrama Play stage by Tom O'Horgan..? who was "a warm up for later plays." Onstage rock band, transference of identities, gangster talk, showdown, the story of a dreamer held captive, Wetzsteon, "the most important living American playwright...in VV.
James Leverett melodramatic forms...the mystery thriller, science fiction, the western...Aggression, paranoia, infantilism, narcissism are all parts of their melodramatic soul...
Connects the Duke Durgens character with Shep's disenchantment with NY insular theatre scene and the difficulties of his Off B. Turista Quote on NY: compared to "the reason I began writing plays was the hope of extending the sensation of play as in kid on into adult life. If play becomes labor why play?"
Fall '67 He meets Shepard with assistant Tonino Guerra to render the "director's ideas into contemporary American dialogue." Common ground is the airplane in Icarus' Mother and in Antonioni scenario.
Hart: What Shep wrote was Shepard's (not Antonioni's).
Shep quote on how he wrote the first version of Point to the point where it begins to speak for radical politics, "he used quite a bit of my original stuff..."
"Hashing and pleasing Carlo Ponti, I spent two years, off and on, around the whole business."
Shep plays drums with Moray Eels in this production.
December 29, 1967 Forensic and the Navigators Theatre Genesis Ralph Cook with the Moray Eels Chet Stu and O-lan. Begins with a five page scenario that expands as the actors work with it. O-Lan Johnson finds her name and things she has said in the play. Theme of young revolutionaries. Shaved, Unseen, Sidewinder. Problem with the ending so the smoke comes on and the band plays loudly. First NYC reviews for O-lan eating rice krispie sname(?) from a character in Buck's The Good Earth. Description is flattering, "a little Hell's Angelette." In image of leather jacket and jeans she is Shep's female counterpart. Levy like Aaron female characters are based on or connected to her.
From the Ingleside section of LA, father walks out on family and they work their way across country. Quits school at 14 and she and Scarlett part of Off off Broadway.
The Hawk at Theatre Genesis. Scarlett meets Johnny Dark from Jersey City.
Shep leaves playing drums to work with Antonioni in Italy for two months.
Bobbs Merril publishes a collection.
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