Samuel Shepard Rogers III\u00a0(November 5, 1943 \u2013 July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He won 10\u00a0Obie Awards\u00a0for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. Shepard received the\u00a0Pulitzer Prize for Drama\u00a0in 1979 for his play\u00a0Buried Child. He was nominated for an\u00a0Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor\u00a0for portraying pilot\u00a0Chuck Yeager\u00a0in the 1983 film\u00a0The Right Stuff. He received the\u00a0PEN\/Laura Pels Theater Award\u00a0as a master American dramatist in 2009.\u00a0New York\u00a0magazine described Shepard as “the greatest American playwright of his generation.”<\/p>\n
Shepard’s plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements,\u00a0black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society.\u00a0His style evolved from the absurdism of his early\u00a0off-off-Broadway\u00a0work to the realism of later plays like\u00a0Buried Child\u00a0and\u00a0Curse of the Starving Class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Samuel Shepard Rogers III\u00a0(November 5, 1943 \u2013 July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He won 10\u00a0Obie Awards\u00a0for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. Shepard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-8278","movie_engine_person","type-movie_engine_person","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n