Shepard writes about writing

Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance

“…to the same position as that of the audience. Miss Scoons, for instance, describes how she is in both the position of spectator and performer, and, like the audience, is witnessing "[p]eople living in dreams which are the same dreams I'm dreaming but never living" (77). Miss Scoons plays a variety of filmic roles in this playdescribed at the beginning of the play as the "[v]ery sexy [ .…”

“…Later on in the act, the neon frame entrances her: "miss scoons turns toward the rectangle as though to leave but stops suddenly. She seems to go into a hypnotic state and just stares at the triangle" (77). She expresses her desire to embody, rather than simply occupy, the world of the dream.…”

“…People never having to look the city square in the eyes. (77) Laura Mulvey has written on how the cinema screen can facilitate the audience's regression to the state prior to Lacan's classification of the instance of self-identification in the "mirror-stage." She notes how the audience can "lose themselves" in a film, yet simultaneously "the cinema has distinguished itself in the production of ego ideals as expressed in particular in the star system, the stars centering both screen presence and screen story as they act out a complex process of likeness and difference (the glamorous impersonates the ordinary)."…”

“…She seems to be calling for the liberation of a core self, if it exists, removed from the corporeal, which could actually inhabit the dream world. Her speech rejects the visceral and the needs of her body-eating, sleeping, urinating/defecating-especially when she knows that there are those who have actually been integrated into the oneiric sphere, "living in dreams which are the same dreams I'm dreaming but never living" (77).…”

“…The other characters dissuade Pat from taking a walk alone by threatening that all the group would have to go looking for her if she got lost, thus all of them would miss the fireworks and they "might all trip and be there on the beach for weeks unconscious" (77). Later on, Jill and Pat attempt to entice and flirt with the pilot with their underwear around their ankles, crouched on the sand as they try to urinate, as though the exposure of their bodies will lure the male pilot to the ground.…”