"Curse of the Starving Class - Summary" Drama for Students As she cooks, Wesley recounts the nights events, making car sounds as he pushes the wheelbarrow off. They wanted large houses, cars, two-car garages, front and back yards. Authors Series, this book provides a concise introduction to Shepards life, short descriptions of almost all of his works up to States of Shock, and discussions of the themes and techniques that characterize Shepards work as a whole. The play closed on April 9, 1978. In an eerie way he is speaking neither to his mother nor directly to the audience; instead, the audience is allowed to hear his thought processes. Then, looking in that bloody fridge, he, like his children, finds nothing: zero! Emma hates living with her family and repeatedly announces plans to leave home. Tense. Man yelling. Michael and me -- well, we're closer than most brothers and sisters. Realism, a style of drama that seeks to represent the world on the stage just as it is in real life, was out of favor in the 1960s, the decade in which Shepard began writing. . View All Characters in Curse of the Starving Class, THIS FEATURE IS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR PRO MEMBERS. Vol. At the same time, land speculators were buying the land of Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, and Riverside counties and preparing it for residential development. Wesley refuses to stop Emma, and Ella begins to tell him about her plans to sell the house. New York, NY, Linda Ray Wesley enters and they discuss Weston's laundry and the best way to help the lamb with the maggots. The play closed on April 9, 1978. Ella and Wesley react differently to Westons abuse. Wesley appears, bloodied, and tells Weston that he has tried to get the money back. [5] The cast was as follows: Wesley - Ebbe Roe Smith Ella - Olympia Dukakis Emma - Pamela Reed Taylor - Kenneth Welsh Weston - James Gammon Ellis - Eddie Jones Malcolm - John Aquino Wesley re-enters, wearing his father's old clothes. Emma returns, still furious, and the three begin an argument about the starving class and whether or not they are part of it. Emma explains that her father broke the door down the night before in a drunken rage. I could hear the coyotes. The play opens on Wesley, who is loading broken pieces of the familys front door into a wheelbarrow. Wesley tells Weston that his creditors are going to kill him. I could hear stock cars squealing down the street. Ella is a stressed out woman trying to cope with intense emotional damage and frustration. eNotes.com absolutely zero! Kissel, Howard, Review of Curse of the Starving Class, in Womens Wear Daily, March 3, 1978. He has done his laundry, which is all nicely folded on the table, and the lamb is back in the kitchen. They are realistic as stage properties, but the sheer quantity Weston brings home is obsessive, imparting a meaning beyond their food value. After this outburst he passes out. Hes plastered and doesnt want to move. Foot kicking door. In a way, Weston plays his role as a father perfectly: what would the patriarchy be without chest thumping? The man tells her that he was going to knock but that there was no door. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. Makes me feel lonely. Ellas loneliness, or the incredible amount of adrenaline she has to produce in order to keep her body togetherIm not sure about her soul; shes not that deepmakes her hungry. Research Playwrights, Librettists, Composers and Lyricists. . Some population geographers see the U.S. cities of Los Angeles and San Diego and the Mexican city of Tijuana as one immense megalopolis, a mega-city with tens of millions of inhabitants. He is the representative for several large corporations that are looking to buy up land. Feet walking toward the door. The curse, as Ella puts it, of the Tate family is that they have nitroglycerine liquid dynamite running in their blood. Malcolm enters and informs the family that Emma has been arrested for riding her horse through the Alibi Club and shooting up the bar. Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. . When she turns around she finds that there is a man standing in the room with her. Mom screaming. Wesley asks her how she got out of jail and she tells him that she made sexual overtures at the guard. Already a member? Sound disappearing. Makes me feel like were someone else. Taylor appears and tells Ella that he has the final draft of the deed of sale. The last date is today's She reassures the refrigerator that soon there will be little eggs, butter, and other foods tucked away inside of it. Word Count: 302. Wesley then leaves and Emma returns, covered in mud after being thrown from the horse and dragged through the mud. Mans voice. Wesley then leaves and Ella begins to give a motherly talk on what happens during menstruation and what cannot be done during the cycle. Wesley realizes that it was Taylor who sold Weston the desert property just as Ellis arrives with fifteen hundred dollars for the house, the exact amount Weston owes to gangsters. However, the tom cat won't let go because if it does it will fall and die. He pulls out the $1,500, telling them that is the amount that Weston owes to some pretty hard fellas. . Like any second something could invade me. I listened like an animal. 2003 eNotes.com . She wants to know what he wants her mother for and he tells her that he is in the real-estate business and is helping her mother sell the house. Still, Ella and Wesley both convey their hurt and their ambivalence toward Westons power over them. Act 2 begins with the sounds of hammering. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. Afraid of sound. She then decides to steal her mother's car and take up a life of crime, claiming that it is the only way to make a real living in this world. Bottoms, Stephen J., The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Alone, Ella stares at Weston asleep on the table; he sits up, they look at each other, she runs off, and he lurches toward the refrigerator, kicking artichokes out of his way. He is easily taken advantage of and when his debts are not paid, it takes an even more terrifying toll on the people close to him. Scouting me. Feeling strong ties to his family and to the land, Wesley maintains the farm after the others have given up. When he returns, he is wearing Westons overcoat, tennis shoes, and baseball cap, and he says that he butchered the lamb for food. Whys he waiting to get out? [5] Ellis, the owner of the Alibi Club walks into the house and sees Weston on the table. They were Second World War veterans, he said, who were disappointed in a way that they didnt understand. ELLA ( after a while) You shouldn't be doing that. Weston enters, even drunker than he was before. Word Count: 509. Soft crying. Ella finally enters and says that she is going on a business luncheon with Taylor. Ella Tate is the wife of Weston and mother of Wesley and Emma Tate. Wheels screaming off down hill. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. The three of them converse tensely until Ella enters. Conservatives, however, decry feminism, blaming it for rising divorce rates and what they see as a breakdown of the nuclear family. He tells Wesley to go clean up, and he'll make him a big breakfast. But treating Shepards stage paradigms superficially can lead to characterizations that miss the point of how his figures got to be heartbroken or angry in the first place. Ed. The play ends with Ella and Wesley staring at the lamb carcass. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. He pulls out the. Looking at the lamb carcass, she asks Wesley to help her remember the story Weston always told about the eagle. Ella, Wesley's mother, enters the kitchen. While Ella takes steps to get away by trying to sell the old homestead, through a lawyer named Taylor (Andrew Rothenberg), Wesley cant imagine his life as anything other than what it is: he moves and speaks as if bewitched by the awfulness; his existence is a Daddy-dominated dream. Shoulder smashing. Act I Ella decides to take matters into her own hands and puts the house up for sale without consulting her husband. I could feel myself lying far below them on my bed like I was on the ocean and overhead they were on reconnaissance. These people are not meant to be accurate representations of real people, nor are we meant to believe that this family had a lamb, brought it inside, and then butchered it. Wearing a 4-H Club uniform, Emma carries charts illustrating how to cut up a chicken. She then becomes angry with the refrigerator and slams it shut. This play cannot be decoded as an allegory in which we can reduce the refrigerator to a representation of spiritual hunger, the lamb to a representation of sacrifice and innocence, and the door to a representation of the barrier between the family and the outside world. But with the millions of people who now lived there, there simply was not enough room in the city. Gain full access to show guides, character breakdowns, auditions, monologues and more! . Urban Sprawl Our Essay Lab can help you tackle any essay assignment within seconds, whether youre studying Macbeth or the American Revolution. In the night. Emma, by way of contrast, often shouts her lines from offstage. online is the same, and will be the first date in the citation. Motif Ella tries to take the money from Wesley, but he tells her there is not enough to go to Europe on. Feet and hands tearing. Like several of Shepard's plays, Cures of the Starving Class explores family dysfunction in Western America. Then stopping. Monologues are presented on StageAgent for educational purposes only. Weston, once a pilot, is now an alcoholic heavily in debt. Ellis grabs the money back from Wesley (feeling that now he is owed for the damage to his bar), and the act closes as Ella agrees to come to the police station to pick up Emma. Marranca, Bonnie, ed. My Messerschmitt. Every resident of the Village Landais has dementiaand the autonomy to spend each day however they please. The play alludes to the golden age of motoring when Ella's prized Packard is mentioned, and also blown up, which signifies the . Wheels screaming. professional theatre, regional theatre, university / college theatre, community theatre, Ages 12-17: Camp Broadway Ensemble @ Carnegie Hall. Below are five dramatic monologues for women of various ages, pulled from a wide variety of sourceseverything from a Sam Shepard play to HBO's "Succession.". "Curse of the Starving Class - Bibliography" Great Characters in Literature Weston explains his new outlook: He took a bath, walked around the place naked, cleaned everything, ate a good breakfast, and decided to fix things up. Cohn, Ruby. Start your 48-hour free trial to get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. He tells her to take a nap on the table because itll do wonders for her. Whenand where doesTheCurse of the Starving Class take place? Heart pounding. Allow Necessary Cookies & Continue In her attempt to steal the car, she is blown up with the car by the bomb that Slater puts in it. [2] The screenplay was written by Bruce Beresford, who also served as an executive producer. She climbs up and stretches out on it as Wesley, completely naked, enters. I could smell the avocado blossoms. 1970s: With the first wave of feminism, women begin demanding equal treatment by the law and by their husbands. Ella has called the police because Weston threatened to kill her, but she doesnt leave right away; Wesley is upset that his mother has summoned outside forces to their home. Wesley wanders in, dazed and naked, wet from his bath. She is a small woman wearing a bathrobe and pink fuzzy slippers, and her hair is in rollers. 14. He tells Weston that he has butchered the lamb for food. Its themes include the struggle for dignity, moral obligations to family members, and the effect of money in America. Once she is arrested she says that she gains her freedom by offering sexual bribes to the sheriff. Christian H. Moe. For instance, sprinkling sand on the stage to evoke Shepards edge-of-America Western localeshe grew up on an avocado farm in Duarte, California, near Route 66as is done in the current revival of his 1977 play Curse of the Starving Class (at the Signature, under the direction of Terry Kinney), does little to get at his genius, which was not about surfaces but about how peoples lives can be mangled by their belief in surfaces. The central city suffers while middle-class people flee to suburbs that sprawl ever farther into what was once farmland. Weston says that when he woke up that morning, after sleeping on the table, that he felt like a new man and walked around their property naked to reclaim ownership. Taylor is in disbelief, and Ellis threatens him. Car door slamming. The use of the artichokes in Curse of the Starving Class suggests both the realistic and mythic aspects of Shepards dramatic strategy. The play opens with Wesley putting pieces of a broken down door into a wheelbarrow. 6162. Even all the sleeping animals. Hello, this is Emma's monologue from Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard. Can you send me character analysis of characters of Sam Shepard's play "Curse of the Starving Class"? Ella re-enters with groceries and throws the artichokes on the floor. "Curse of the Starving Class - Literary Style" Drama for Students We dont see Weston for a while, but hes everywhere in this run-down home, or everywhere that violence and destruction have taken place, including in his sons and his wifes consciousness. He declares to them that he is a whole new person, and Wesley, finally stopped eating, tells Weston that the men who are after him are going to kill him. Can you send me character analysis of characters of Sam Shepard's play "Curse of the Starving Class"? When Ella asks what Emma is carrying, Emma tells her that they are the materials for her 4-H demonstration on how to cut up a frying chicken, and then she immediately starts looking for her chicken in the refrigerator. Emma is frightened by him, but Wesley tells her to stay calm. 1970s: In Los Angeles, suburbanization continues unabated. As Wesley and Ella argue, Ella speaks of the curse she sees operating on the family. He looks at his parents; they do not notice him, and he leaves with the lamb. What he didnt know then, but worked out in glorious play after play, once hed found his vocation, was why, amid all the waste and destruction, a boys heart would still beat faster whenever his father drove up the road, a father confused about his family and his effect on them, lost to any idea of love, trying to catch dreams at the bottom of a bottle. "Curse of the Starving Class - Dramatic Devices" Survey of Dramatic Literature She then pulls out a wad of cash and tells him that she's taking their mother's car and going into crime. When the bodys defenses fail and intruders are allowed to breed inside the body, the play tells us, the body will soon fall to those forces that threaten it. . To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. Weston looks around and moves to the refrigerator. Wesley tells her, when she asks if he is going to take over the role of Daddy Bear, that he feels himself becoming his father, that as he put on Westons clothes, he could feel something growing on him. Obviously, these two motifs are related to each other, for disease is the intrusion of an entity that should be kept outside the body. The Curse Of The Starving Class - Monologue (Wesley) A monologue from the play by Sam Shepard Wesley is cleaning up shards of wood from the door his father broke down the night before during a drunken outburst. The cast was as follows: The play was revived Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, running from July 30, 1985 to February 16, 1986. President George W. Bush proposes an energy policy that stresses greater production, but many citizens mistrust this policy because of Bushs and Vice-President Dick Cheneys ties to oil companies and the energy industry. Just from my dad coming back. Gale Cengage Downshifting into second for the last pull up the hill. No sound. I could feel the space around me like a big, black world. It is shocking to see a live lamb on stage and even more shocking to see it bloody and dead; similarly, the centrality of the refrigerator to every scene and the constant opening and closing of its door reminds us of the theme of hunger and starving, but Shepard refuses to nail down its meaning for us. Swearing he will kill Taylor and Ella, Weston staggers against the table and falls asleep on top of it. Among other things, in act 1, Sam Shepard calls for the table and chairs, the refrigerator and stove, the remains of the broken door, the wheelbarrow, the duffel, the bag full of artichokes, and the live lamb and the collapsible pen. Emma asks the refrigerator why it doesn't have any food because they aren't part of the starving class. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. As Ellis talks to them, they learn that Weston owes money to some pretty hard fellas. Wesley offers to take the money to those men, but Ella forbids it. When Wesley tells him that Ella is thinking of selling the house, Weston explodes and threatens to kill her and Taylor. Taylor then enters and Ella tells him what is happened. New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1981. Planes still hanging. "Curse of the Starving Class - Media Adaptations" Drama for Students Wesley and Ella talk about Westons eagle story as the play ends. Curse of the Starving Class premiered Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival, on March 2, 1978, presented by Joseph Papp. Act two opens on Wesley and Emma in the kitchen, where Wesley is building a new front door for the house. Emma is enraged that her mother is selling the house and Taylor tries to convince her that selling the property is in their best interest. Randall, Phyllis R., Adapting to Reality: Language in Shepards Curse of the Starving Class, in Sam Shepard: A Casebook, edited by Kimball King, Garland, 1988. Teeth covered with peanuts. Curse of the Starving Class: Directed by J. Michael McClary. Weston tries to calm Wesley down, and to wake Ella up, but cannot seem to do either. eNotes.com Sam Shepard: The Life and Work of an American Dreamer. New York, NY, Ages 12-17: Camp Broadway Ensemble @ Carnegie Hall . Me, the enemy. Weston yells at him, telling him that they didn't need the food, because the refrigerator is full for once. Then WESLEY'S mother, ELLA, enters slowly from down left. Ella looks at the carcass, remembering Westons story of the eagle. The last date is today's When: what time period Where: city and state. Emerson is a minor character who represents the men that Weston is in debt to. I could feel myself in my bed in my room in this house in this town in this state in this country. First gear grinding. Emma is with him, and the two of them discuss the potential sale of the house and Ellas relationship with Taylor. He asks what happened to Wesley, who had clearly been beaten up. Mom screaming for police. 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