March 2, 1978 Curse of the Starving Class New York Shakespeare Festival. Directed by Robert Woodruff.
"He was dealing with his familiar themes of heredity and the increasing fragmentation and alienation of the American family but the work seemed more distinct and formed as if it had been lifted and clarified from his own inner turmoil to a pure and complete existence of its own...Mingus words didn't rush out of him any more as quickly as anyone could speak telling about a family in order to speak about the culture."
Shepard and Woodruff do the second production of Suicide in B b.
Creates a controversy in NYC because it won an Obie before being produced Off B.
Renaldo and Clara written and directed by Bob Dylan public presentation.
Days of Heaven directed by Terrence Malick two years in the making finally released. Nestor Almendros comment on Shep "sterling presence". A bande(?) a part an outsider. He didn't hang out with the crew. He was with his woman and stayed apart...public release.
Annette Insdorf in Take One.
April 1978 Seduced at the Trinity Square Rep Co. A long barren period between Curse written in 1976/77 and Buried Child written in 1978. Artist as visionary Rip Torn but not interesting. Good list of the uncompleted manuscripts and material in the Boston Univer Collection including Links.
May 1978 Tongues S.F. with Joe Chaikin to meet regularly for three weeks in different locations and a piece on voices expressing character, emotion action; SS had sent Chaikin a copy of Manfly to direct. "It began from almost nothing but the desire to work together. Odd team. SS Western farmboy, hetero, young punk. Joe an eastern Jew, quietly gay, wise old man like and considered Tooth too violent but he likes the meditative like Beckett but both sought to express the same-"the inner life of man and the extremes of their personalities actually made their collaboration a balance."
June 27, 1978 Buried Child at Magic Theatre S.F. directed by Robert Woodruff.
Curse is about leaving as a teenager, Buried is about a return 6 years later.
Audience response: The play acts on the audience the same way the tensions of the play act on the char...it becomes the things it is about: emotional violence and the mystery of the family bond. Smashing bottles.
A true mystery how we turn out the way we do, or how we were chosen to be born into a particular family.
Buried Child similar to other plays.
Opens June 1978 at the Magic 99 seat theatre.
Flying Ranch lease runs out and since he did not have the money it was bought by developers and they all move into Mill Valley.
SS into the doldrums again READING Handke Richard Hugo Thomas Wolfe A Western Journal, Pynchon the Crying of Lot 49.
Summer, 1978 After a letter from D. Nagrin, SS writes Jacaranda. See Nagrin letter from Dec. 1978 complaining that SS write more for him.
Bay Area Playwrights Festival run by Woodruff and the Padua Hills Writers Conference run by the Genesis friend Murry Mednick. GOOD QUOTES on writing Process and on the problem and no need with ending the plays, audience reception.
GOOD on Journals and on Jazz Sketching.
List of materials from the Boston U. Collection including Link a play about golf.
Inacoma and Seduced from this period-projection of the artist as visionary like Angel City and Suicide in B b. GOOD complaint in the journal that "he felt like writing but had nothing to say and then berated himself for complaining...stymied and unsatisfied. Reading: Jack London, Faulkner, Joyce, The story of Secretariat and Flann O'Brian. A The Tired Policeman and At Swim Two Birds Irish phase with Johnny Dark. Compulsively talking in a brogues Good eye bad eye.
Summer of 1978. A profile ee 6'1" 160 lbs ambition salvation.
Summer 1978 at the Bay Area Playwrights Workshop Collaborates with Fornes on Red Woman GOOD. Rage of Unknown Origin with the Eamon Reese character.
Sept. 1978 Days of Heaven released in the theatres and SS gets good notices. Three agents for plays acting jobs in film and one for plays and another for screenplays.
Oct. 1978 Buried Child at Theatre for the New City. Directed by Robert Woodruff (later transferred to Theatre de Lys which we saw in April 1979 just before it closed right before he won the Pulitzer).
Buried Child promised to Theatre for the New City who gave him a small commission for the play and were happy to have Woodruff direct in NYC but only three week guarantee. The first SS play to open in NYC since Unseen Hand and Forensic in 1970.
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