Samuel Shepard Rogers, known by his stage name Sam Shepard, was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, on November 5, 1943.  His father was an army officer, and the family moved frequently during Shepard’s childhood. Sam worked in the stables at a horse ranch in Chino between 1958 and 1960.  His father’s alcoholism, the resulting chaos/instability in childhood and his experience working at a ranch pervade his plays. An example is Buried Child. Shepard graduated from high school in 1961 and took classes at Mount San Antonio Junior College for a year, where he set out to study agriculture[1].

The Bishop’s Company Repertory Players, a traveling theater group, made a stop in Shepard’s town. He joined and traveled with them for two years after which he moved to New York City and began writing a series of one-act plays. In 1964, his first two plays Cowboys and The Rock Garden were produced. In 1968, two years after writing his first produced play Shepard won three awards. Thus, his success as a playwright begun soon after he started writing.

Shepard married actress O-Lan Jones Dark in 1969 and his first son, Jesse Mojo, was born in 1970. He and his family moved to London in 1971 where they would stay till 1974. On his returned, he joined Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, a traveling band of musicians, and was asked to write a movie about the tour[2]. Shepard wrote a book about the experience instead, 1977’s The Rolling Thunder Logbook.

 At age 73, Sam Shepard died on July 27, 2017 due to complications of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.[1]

 

[1]Shewey, D. (1997). Sam Shepard. New York: Da Capo Press.

[2]Crank, J. (2013). Understanding Sam Shepard. Columbia: South Carolina University Press.