[Shepard's plays] have no extrinsics. Not only their meaning lies in themselves, but also their mode and their tradition. Shepard's theatre, as much as Richard Foreman's or Robert Wilson's, is the theatre of a private artist—one who happens to have the gift of making instant public connection with his words. The other web of connections that we call stage convention isn't there; the inner sense comes to you unmediated, direct, implacable—make of it what you will….
[Icarus' Mother and Cowboy Mouth] deal with the essential elements of theatre—play and illusion. In Cowboy Mouth, written in collaboration with Patti Smith, the two characters are plainly playful avatars of their co-authors, surrogates to be moved through the crazy, competitive games of a lovehate relationship. Cavale, a death-centered woman with ambitions in the rock world, has lured Slim, a moody cowboy type, away from his wife and baby to convert him into a figure at once a savior and a superstar, or in her words, "a rock-and-roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth." The conversion process, like the love affair, does not take; they are reduced to the level of desperate children, either making up games or screaming at each other, until they are saved by one of the most unlikely dei ex machina ever brought onstage, a giant lobster….
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