Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance

Emma Creedon has lectured at University College Dublin, Ireland and the National University of Ireland, Galway. She has also worked as a playwright and theatre director and her work has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English and Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics. Dr. Creedon was awarded her PhD from University College Dublin.

• Introduction 1. Surrealism and Sam Shepard's Early Plays: 1964 1967 2. Myth, Ritual and a Search for Selfhood: Surrealism in Sam Shepard's Plays from 1969 to 1972 3. Sam Shepard's Family Plays and the Representation of Gender 4. A Comparative Study of Sam Shepard's Angel City (1976) and Luis Buñuel's and Salvador Dalí's Un chien andal ou (1929) 5. Tongues (1978), Savage/Love (1979) and The War in Heaven: Angel's Monologu e (1985): Joseph Chaikin and Sam Shepard in Collaboration 6. States of Shock (1991) and Simpatico (1994): Performances of Waste 7. Conclusion: Through the 1990s and Beyond

“Emma Creedon’s Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance stands as a unique and important contribution to the vast scholarly material centered upon ‘the enfant terrible cowboy poet of the American stage’ … . this book serves as a notable contribution to works centered on Shepard while also plowing new terrain, revealing the promise of utilizing Surrealism to better elucidate theatre.” (Shannon Blake Skelton, Comparative Drama, Vol. 51 (3), 2017)“If your interests are in how the output of an immensely talented and noted playwright reflects and also shapes the geist of his age, then welcome to Emma Creedon’s analysis. … Sam Shepard and The Aesthetics of Performance is an easy read. … Emma Creedon’s intensely researched work will prove enormously stimulating and thought-enhancing if one takes the time to consider the movement of a writer within streams of cultural influences.” (Hubert O'Hearn, sandiegobookreview.com, January, 2016)