SOURCE: ";Visions of the End: The Early Plays,"; in American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard, edited by Bonnie Marranca, Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1981, pp. 72-8.

A director and critic, Bloom addresses Shepard's initial work, arguing that the early plays are a form of ";gestalt theatre"; that conveys the consciousness of America in the 1960s.

Even without being there, one can easily imagine that the first audiences to see Sam Shepard's early one-acts must have been shocked by their strange and novel theatricality. Although by 1964 off-off-Broadway audiences had already been exposed to the European avant-garde as well as to such Americans as Joel Oppenheimer, Al Carmines, and Leonard Melfi, nothing could have prepared them for Shepard's spare, cool, yet explosive short plays; specifically, for a central character in Chicago who spent most of the play in a bathtub situated on an otherwise bare stage, and two characters who...