Word: shamanism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...claptrap, all so intricately conceived that to follow it in any sort of literary sense is ridiculous. They talk about Shepard writing in dream language, and the bearded wunderkinds at NYU write introductions to his plays that speak of ritual Indian drug use and the tradition of the shaman--and all of them are full of shit. You can't follow Shepard from word to word, because his transitional sentences are emotional. His characters are suffering from psychotic jet-lag and even though the fact that their minds have been careening from one end of the cortex to the other...
...belongs to the actor - or the character - who is always "on." He is the metaphor matador, the tale twister, the verbal bully who mesmerizes those onstage and in the audience with his endless conjury of felicitous syllables. He is the theater's grand gabby old man, the shaman, the incantator, who goes back to Aeschylus and forward to O'Neill and Osborne, Stoppard and Shepard. Put a spotlight on him, and the eloquence swells, the spell continues. He simply will not shut...