Overview:
Written by Sam Shepard, both a playwright and an actor, this play revolves around a pair of lovers-Eddie and May. Eddie is a cowboy, addicted to a lot of fantasy, constant, quick-tempered, a bit violent. May is a half-independent, half-weak-minded heroine at her early thirties. They are drawn to each other, but Eddie is always on the move and abandoning May over and over again. May is trying hard to lead a brand-new life without Eddie. However, May still fails to resist Eddie when he shows up and comes to her life again. The play opens with Eddie coming from afar as he maintains and an emotional wrestling begins. Eddie wants to get May back, May half surrenders to him and half steels her heart to resist his power over her. Anyway, it’s like a tug-of-war. They wrestle with each other like beasts and later lick the wounds of each other and finally, in the end of the story, it turns out that they are half-siblings. That is, they have the same father but different mothers. The story ends with Eddie’s rush departure again and May’s disappointment like what they are at the very beginning of the play.
My “Spark Notes” in class:
1: New York Theater: the different concepts of Broadway, off Broadway(subscription series), Off Off Broadway(repertory theatre, take experimental risks).
2: Structured approach to this play:
A: Agon(y) as the original element of the Ancient Greek Tragedy. It may be of the universals. Virtually, all theatres can be reduced to this kind of struggle between two characters. Like Sisyphus who endures the torture by pushing the stone to the peak of mountain everyday. This kind of agonistic struggle is the heart and soul of each play. There are many types of struggle: against poverty, ignorance, our own uncertainty, our own social weakness and the social power of others, mortality and so on.
B: the structure of the ancient play: chorus chanting, a priest and a chorus, two speakers and a chorus, two speakers spoke to each other as well as to the chorus; the function of chorus. The old man could be partly served as the chorus.
C: From the following layers to interpret this play: Location, Linearity, structure, reality/illusion, subjective/objective, story telling, and conclusion.
Location: the motel in the desert, reflection of the marginalized people and marginalized theme as well as the human mind (inner world and outer world).
Linearity: by adopting the circular instead of the linear structure, the play enhances the quality of repetitiveness of Eddie and May’s on-and-go, on-and-go relationship; it seems there is no move but repetitive infliction and plot of their illegal romance. (Here, Professor Janssen elaborated on the habit, ritual, myth to illustrate the subjectivity behind such physical phenomena in contrast with the compulsion, the urge, the driving force that maps with mental state. I can’t fully understand how it could be related to the play.)
Structure: relate to William Faulkner’s technique of incorporating or juxtaposing the past with present.
Storytelling: its function—every character is living in his own story. ("Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.")
Conclusion: There is not exact meaning. No ending is the best ending, as I conclude from his speech; just leave the blank for the readers to fill in.
Pro.Janssen spark words (Adapted by me, I just catch the sense of them):
1: He is so immersed in his own imagination that no one could share his vision.
2: If someone has great power over you, how can you tell he is not real even though he doesn’t really exist or true to life.
3: What’s in his mind is the realism.
Conclusion: 想起大面教授，以前他的课总会让我顿悟诗歌，小说的巧妙之处。但总是来不及一一记录下来，而今也把之前课程的精髓忘得一干二净了。如今，难得再碰到这种机会，学院请了一位洋教授出山，漂洋过海，这次一定要趁剩下这一个月的上课时间好好做笔记，好好整理，好好看剧本，好好温故而知新
。