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    A Particle of Dread
    A Particle of Dread
    A Particle of Dread
    Ebook84 pages48 minutes

    A Particle of Dread

    By Sam Shepard

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    About this ebook

    In A Particle of Dread, Sam Shepard takes one of the most famous plays in history—Oedipus Rex—and transforms it into a modern American classic. In this telling, Oedipus, King of Thebes, prophesized to kill his father and marry his mother, alternates between his classical identity and that of contemporary “Otto.” His wife (and true mother), Jocasta, is also called Jocelyn, and his antagonist (and true father) is split into three characters, Laius, Larry, and Langos. Two present-day policemen from the Southwest stand in for the Greek chorus as they investigate the murder case. Dazzlingly inventive, ringing with the timelessness of myth, A Particle of Dread is an unforgettable work that grapples with questions of storytelling and destiny—the narratives that we pass down, and how they shape our lives. It is a play that lingers in the mind long after we finish the last scene.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateMar 21, 2017
    ISBN9781101974407
    A Particle of Dread
    Author

    Sam Shepard

    Sam Shepard (Fort Sheridan, Illinois, 1943 - Midway, Kentucky, 2017) se convirtió en un mito contemporáneo: polifacético como Boris Vian, legendario como Neal Cassady, amigo y colaborador de los Stones, Patti Smith y Bob Dylan, batería durante años de un grupo de acid rock, actor en películas como Días del cielo y Elegidos para la gloria, coguionista de Zabriskie Point y Paris, Texas, casado con Jessica Lange durante casi treinta años... y, como remate, autor, galardonado con el Pulitzer y el Obie, de más de cuarenta obras teatrales, por las que se le ha llamado el sucesor de Tennessee Williams. En Anagrama ha publicado las novelas Espía de la primera persona y Yo por dentro, los libros de relatos Cruzando el paraíso y El gran sueño del paraíso, la obra teatral Locos de amor, los volúmenes misceláneos Luna Halcón, Crónicas de motel y Estados de shock. Al norte. Lengua silenciosa y el libro de crónicas Rolling Thunder: con Bob Dylan en la carretera. Fotografía © Patti Smith

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      Book preview

      A Particle of Dread - Sam Shepard

      Scene 1

      OPENING: (No preset music or anything to indicate what’s up ahead other than empty stage. White light up on OEDIPUS, center stage in black-striped bib overalls, short-sleeved white T-shirt, black janitor shoes. His left foot is much larger than his right. He walks with an exaggerated limp. OEDIPUS is mopping up blood from the stage floor. The blood is dripping down from his eyebrows, but OEDIPUS pays no attention to its origins; he just keeps mopping up the constant flow of blood as he speaks.)

      OEDIPUS: This…this was the place, wasn’t it? Roads, trees. Right here. Isn’t this the place where you held me down? Your foot on my back. My chest in the mud. Here, wasn’t it? Someone—someone held me while you hammered a steel spike right through my ankle. Yes, that was it! A spike! Flash of light. Your powerful arm. Every inch of blood. Every vein. My ankle remembers. (Pause.) Or no— Was this the place you dropped me off? Could’ve been. Draped in mystery and confusion. The secret let out. Maybe that was it. Full of fear as you were. Trembling, running, hauling me across your back. Flapping like an extra skin. You think I’d forget? Your breath, panting like a bull calf born. Day and night. Leaves and wind. Left for dead. Hanging from an olive tree. A baby human. Left for dead.

      (OEDIPUS exits. Lights shift.)

      Scene 2

      (Downstage center sits UNCLE DEL on a stool: a large muscular man in a white butcher’s apron splattered with blood, rubber boots, long-sleeved plaid shirt open over white T-shirt, sleeves rolled up. He’s digging his hands into large metal bucket in front of him, coming up with bleeding animal skins, dripping blood and streaming water. He wrings them out while listening to LAWRENCE, who is pacing left and right, downstage of DEL, in a dark three-piece suit and overcoat, daubing his sweaty face with white handkerchief.)

      LAWRENCE: (Pacing left and right.) I don’t know what it is. Lay awake through the night, staring at beams, counting configurations (Wipes his brow with handkerchief.), patterns on the ceiling—seeing things in the dark—

      UNCLE DEL: (Wringing out skin.) What kind of things?

      LAWRENCE: (Continues pacing.) I don’t know—faces, maybe. Beings, bats. Why is it, ordinary people, any old body in the world—two people who don’t even want kids, who just want to, you know, have fun— Why is it those people get pregnant like rabbits and abandon their offspring in dumpsters while we—us—mature, honest citizens of the community who actually want to have a child, end up—

      UNCLE DEL: Have you tried it, doggy-style?

      (LAWRENCE stops in his tracks as UNCLE DEL crosses upstage with dripping skin and hangs it to dry on a clothesline.)

      LAWRENCE: (After pause.) Yes, actually. We have. We’ve experimented with several different positions—

      UNCLE DEL: (Hanging up skin.) To no avail?

      LAWRENCE: (Starts pacing again.) Exactly.

      (DEL pulls on the clothesline, which is on a pulley. Other skins appear from offstage. DEL turns and crosses downstage to the stool again. He sits on the stool, picks up a glass full of bull’s blood, and drinks.)

      UNCLE DEL: Her mounting you, backwards?

      LAWRENCE: (Stops.) Excuse me?

      UNCLE DEL: Her—you know—astride you, with her ass to your head. You know—you on your back.

      LAWRENCE: (Pacing again.) Oh, yes. Of course.

      UNCLE DEL: Standing?

      LAWRENCE: What?

      UNCLE DEL: Both of you standing up. Vertical penetration.

      LAWRENCE: Yes.

      UNCLE DEL: Squatting?

      LAWRENCE: Yes!

      UNCLE DEL: Sitting?

      LAWRENCE: (Pacing.) Yes!

      UNCLE DEL: Underwater?

      LAWRENCE: Yes!

      UNCLE DEL: Mud?

      LAWRENCE: (Stops.) What?

      UNCLE DEL: In the mud?

      LAWRENCE: Like pigs or something?

      UNCLE DEL: Rutting, we used to call it. In the old days. Back in the good old days.

      LAWRENCE: I don’t know. (Begins pacing again.) I don’t want to hear about this.

      (DEL pulls out a set of three knucklebones and rolls them on the floor in front of his stool. He drinks and reads the bones. Makes notes in a ledger he pulls out from under the

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