After filming our trailer for True West as our final project, I realized how much I liked that play. Kunkle said right before he popped the tape into the VHS that this could be the definitive text of our high school career--it had been for some of his students in the past. And looking back on that play, it wasp probably my favorite text of this quarter.
First of all, it is incredibly entertaining. Lee and Austin's shouting matches are as comical and absurd as they are fierce. I loved Malkovich's lisp and Sinise's whiny shrieks. Even with such an emphasis on chaos, though, Shepard was able to lace a couple of themes in between bouts of drunken rage. True West can be seen as a dialogue on what it means to be brothers, what it means to be "stable" in society, and what it means to be desperate. I guess I didn't appreciate how good of a play that True West was in the moment, but now thinking back, Shepard's play was one of my favorite works we studied.
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