SOURCE: Heilman, Robert B. “Shepard's Plays: Stylistic and Thematic Ties.” Sewanee Review 100, no. 4 (fall 1992): 630-44.

In the following essay, Heilman provides a thematic overview of Shepard's plays, highlighting his literary style in each play.

Any playwright with such a highly individualized manner as flashes out at us in the plays of Sam Shepard is likely to be called unique. There is of course no need to deny the uniqueness of Shepard's work. Even in his life, one can observe some shadow or flavor of uniqueness, or unusualness, or elected difference. Born Samuel Shepard Rogers, Jr., in 1943, he chose to be Sam Shepard. He began writing one-act plays, and having them produced, when he was twenty. By 1967, when he was twenty-four, he did his first full-length play, La Turista, and from then on he kept turning out numerous one-act-ers and full-length plays at the rate of almost one a...