Curse of the Starving Class | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Curse of the Starving Class Critical Overview

Curse of the Starving Class is not only the first play of what is known as the "family trilogy" (the two other plays in that trilogy are Buried Child and True West), it also stands as the initial play of the second phase of Shepard's career. A very prolific playwright, Shepard saw numerous of his plays produced in most years from the time of his first play (1965) to 1978, the year of Curse of the Starving Class. This start of the second phase of his career is often interpreted as a move away from radical experimentation toward a greater inclusion of "realism," or the kind of theatre that attempts to portray on stage things as they actually are in the world, both in terms of the construction of the play and in its content. Charles R. Lyons, in his essay "Shepard's Family Trilogy and the Conventions of Modern Realism,"...
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