Sam Shepard is a playwright of zap-pop-pow action, and he is a playwright of comic-book verbs: his plays flash, zoom, and screech across the stage. Primary colors ooze through neon tubing, jazz and rock music shoot through a sound system, and characters hurl words like weapons, wounding each other with Shepard's heightened version of American English, a language of riffs, culled from slang, jargon, punk talk, dime novels, and B-movies. Shepard floods his stage with such language, a codified language of energy sounding through space; and he peoples his stage with the lone heroes of American myths. Gangsters, rock stars, cowboys, and science-fiction images cohabit on his stage; rub-outs, hits, showdowns, and take-offs collide in his plots.

Shepard's plays are often about power, its sources, its manifestations, its styles. His characters fight for power, they usurp others' territory, steal their turf, stake their claims, and they fight, usurp...