Shepard was born on November 5, 1943, in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. He was named Samuel Shepard Rogers III after his father, Samuel Shepard Rogers, Jr., but his nickname was “Steve Rogers”.[5] His father was a teacher and farmer who served in the United States Army Air Forces as a bomber pilot during World War II; Shepard characterized him as “a drinking man, a dedicated alcoholic”.[6] His mother, Jane Elaine (n\u00e9e Schook), was a teacher and a native of Chicago.[7]<\/p>\n
Shepard worked on a ranch as a teenager. After graduating from Duarte High School in Los Angeles County in 1961, he briefly studied agriculture at nearby Mt. San Antonio College, where he became enamored of Samuel Beckett, jazz, and abstract expressionism. Shepard soon dropped out to join a touring repertory group, the Bishop’s Company.
\nAfter securing a position as a busboy at The Village Gate upon arriving in New York City, Shepard became involved in the Off-Off-Broadway theatre scene in 1962 through Ralph Cook, the club’s head waiter. At this time Samuel “Steve” Rogers adopted the professional name Sam Shepard.[5] Although his plays would go on to be staged at several Off-Off-Broadway venues, he was most closely connected with Cook’s Theatre Genesis, housed at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in Manhattan’s East Village. Most of his initial writing was for the stage;[8] after winning six Obie Awards between 1966 and 1968, Shepard emerged as a viable screenwriter with Robert Frank’s Me and My Brother (1968) and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970). Several of Shepard’s early plays, including Red Cross (1966) and La Turista (1967), were directed by Jacques Levy. A habitu\u00e9 of the Chelsea Hotel scene of the era, he also contributed to Kenneth Tynan’s ribald Oh! Calcutta! (1969) and drummed sporadically from 1967 through 1971 with psychedelic folk band The Holy Modal Rounders, appearing on Indian War Whoop (1967) and The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders (1968).<\/p>\n
Shepard’s early science fiction play The Unseen Hand (1969) would influence Richard O’Brien’s stage musical The Rocky Horror Show. Shepard’s Cowboy Mouth\u2014a collaboration with his then-lover Patti Smith\u2014was staged at The American Place Theater in April 1971, providing early exposure for the future punk rock singer. The story and characters were loosely inspired by their relationship, and after opening night, he abandoned the production and fled to New England without a word to anyone involved.[9] He wrote plays out of his house and served for a semester as Regents’ Professor of Drama at the University of California, Davis. Shepard accompanied Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue of 1975 as the ostensible screenwriter of the surrealist Renaldo and Clara (1978) that emerged from the tour; because much of the film was improvised, Shepard’s services were seldom used. His diary of the tour (Rolling Thunder Logbook) was published by Penguin Books in 1978. A decade later, Dylan and Shepard co-wrote the 11-minute “Brownsville Girl”, included on Dylan’s Knocked Out Loaded (1986) album and later compilations.
\nIn 1975, he was named playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre, where he created many of his notable works, including his Family Trilogy. One of the plays in the trilogy, Buried Child (1978), was the play that won him a Pulitzer Prize and marked a major turning point in his career, heralding some of his best-known work, including True West (1980), Fool for Love (1983), and A Lie of the Mind (1985). A darkly comic tale of abortive reunion, in which a young man drops in on his grandfather’s Illinois farmstead only to be greeted with devastating indifference by his relations, Buried Child saw Shepard stake a claim to the psychological terrain of classic American theatre. Curse of the Starving Class (1978) and True West (1980), the other two plays of the trilogy, received their premier productions. Some critics have expanded this trio to a quintet, including Fool for Love (1983) and A Lie of the Mind (1985). Shepard won a record setting 10 Obie Awards from 1966 – 1984 for writing and directing.<\/p>\n