Curse of the Starving Class a Play in Three Acts

by Sam Shepard

A major work by one of our theatre's most respected and celebrated writers, this award-winning examination of the dislocations of contemporary American society was produced with great success in both London and New York.The setting is a farmhouse in the American West, inhabited by a family who has enough to eat but not enough to satisfy the other hungers that bedevil them. The father is a drunk; the mother a frowzy slattern; the daughter precocious beyond her years; and the son a deranged idealist.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Read For School, Classics, American

Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Sam Shepard was an American artist who worked as an award-winning playwright, writer and actor. His many written works are known for being frank and often absurd, as well as for having an authentic sense of the style and sensibility of the gritty modern American west. He was an actor of the stage and motion pictures; a director of stage and film; author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs; and a musician.

Reviews

[Cemre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bir dönem Ankara DT tarafından da sahnelenen Aç Sınıfın Laneti, benim için, vermek istediği mesajını tam olarak veremeyen bir oyun oldu. Bazı yerlerde kopukluklar, havada kalmışlıklar hissettim ve bu sebeple de ne yazık ki beklediğim tadı alamadım.

[Emre · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

The scene is a ramshackle little ranch in the desert occupied by a family that is coming apart at the seams. Weston, the husband, is a drunk who wants out. His wife, Ella, is sick of Weston and who also wants out. They have a son, Wesley, and a daughter, Emma. Both Weston and Ella have schemes to sell the ranch out from under his/her spouse and leave.

Sam Shepard is an expert at presenting dysfunctional Western families, and Curse of the Starving Class is one of his best plays. At the end, all plans vaporize into thin air, and we are left with the ranch. Weston learns too late he loves the place. He shouts:

'CAUSE THIS IS WHERE I SETTLED DOWN! THIS IS WHERE THE LINE ENDED! RIGHT HERE! I MIGRATED TO THIS SPOT! I GOT NOWHERE TO GO TO! THIS IS IT!

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK. I didn't actually read this, I saw it at ACT but it was fantastic. So funny and completely surprising. I'm going again tonight. Some of the monologues are a little unwieldily, particularly the opening one but I got used to it as the play moved on. Also, I think some different staging and a different actor could have made the delivery more natural. Part of me wants to start reading the Shepard cannon, but part of me wants to wait because it was so much fun to go into the show blind and be surprised by the events as they unfolded. Central themes are the breakdown of the American Dream and family unit but in a very imaginative way. Loved it.

[deats]

"suddenly everything changed. i wasn't the same person anymore. i was just a hunk of meat tied to a big animal. being pulled."

"i'm still living here. i'm living here right up to the point when i leave."

play journal week #3

curse of the starving class: commissioned by joseph papp (mr. the public theatre!) world premiered at the royal court theatre in london in 1977 and won the 76-77 obie. nyc premiered off-broadway at the new york shakespeare festival (which would eventually become shakespeare in the park nyc) in 1978 and closed after a month. revived at the promenade in 1985 with kathy bates as ella, and ran for an additional 6 months or so.

easily my favorite shepard, which is saying something. jesus christ.

the way this guy writes blood. clinging to the fraying ends of a family structure that's been unraveling for years, just in case there's something salvageable underneath. rare shining moments of connection, functionality, hope. maybe we weren't all just pretending, maybe there really was something structurally sound here. quiet certainty that those moments won't, can't, last. simultaneously looking out for one another and looking for the most vulnerable spots to strike. augh.

[peyton]

YOU HAVENT SEEN MY CHICKEN HAVE YOU? YOU MOTHERFUCKER!

enough to eat but not enough to satisfy their hunger 😮😮😮 sam shepard you have done it again. need another play with emma in every scene though, love her

[Mimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

pretty fucked up play !!

[Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Talk about Hillbilly elegy. Poke my mind's eye out! very vivid.

[Luke Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, then. This was an interesting play. While I did like Shepard’s thematic exploration of how seeking dreams selfishly leads to destruction for more than just one person, there were several parts involving nudity (including the son onstage peeing and walking around naked, which makes me incredibly uncomfortable as a reader) and some off-color sexual lines (the mom mentioning both her father and her son are circumcised, an eagle being fascinated by lamb testicles) that threw me for a loop. I also found the character of Emma to be fleshed out up until she decided to shoot out a bar once she heard her father sold the house for some reason (the same with the dad and his table nap making him a better man, although less so). But other content stuff, particularly the duet scenes, were well-written and felt like real conversations people would have in the real world, and I appreciated watching this off-color family self-destruct, if only while questioning some of its realism. Great themes and interesting characters, but the nudity that could be directed around, a few sexually crass lines, and some ludicrous character developments gave me pause.

[Divya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vicious, absurd, and jarring. In this play, Shepard explores the dysfunction and dynamics of a Western American family and the American Dream. While everything and everyone in this play are vivid and lively, the disenchantment and wreckage of the typical American Dream remains towering over the play. The four main characters in this play are incredibly interesting, with each one being sharply characterized through brilliantly executed dialogue. It's so easy to see the obvious familial similarities between the parents and the children, yet it is also just as easy to pick apart the characters and hold them to their own senses of individuality. Even the side characters have distinct attitudes and personalities of their own.

I just want to appreciate the exposition seen at the beginning of the play. It's such a classic case of tactically withholding information (and then slowly revealing it). I thought Shepard executed that expositional scene wonderfully, interspersing the serious conversation with snippets of absurdism and snark from the characters.

Plays are, however, made to be performed and not read, and the possible direction for this play could make it so much more interesting. I really am eagerly awaiting the day when I'd be able to watch this play (and the many others I've been reading lately) performed live.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like several of Shepard's plays, Cures of the Starving Class explores family dysfunction in Western America. The family of four featured in this play live together in misery on a ranch. They swipe at each other viciously over their conflicting hopes and dreams until they rip each other to shreds. This is all set against the backdrop of external forces that are brutal and unforgiving.

This is a good play. A couple of the monologues were a bit overdone (which is why I'm not giving this five starts), but taken with The Buried Child and True West, it helps to create a shattering picture of American families in distress.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good to check back into Shepard's strange version of America. This was written during his peak period (his more recent stuff, most of which I have not read, is not as highly regarded), and like many of his other good ones, it concerns a squabbling family in the Southwest. The title and some of the dialogue indicates that Shepard viewed the travails of this clan as symptomatic of being part of the great white working class - and travails there are: alcoholism, violence, living with poverty breathing down their necks, smart alecky kids, a confused mother, a drunken, headstrong father. Parts of it are absurd and funny, but ultimately this is no comedy.

The play begins with the son Wesley, trying to repair the door his father, Weston, has smashed to bits in a drunken rage. The refrigerator is empty - there is a lot of action concerning the refrigerator and food. This is clearly a family in disarray. Both the parents are trying to sell the house out from under each other. The father is tough and dynamic, but seriously cracked, and much of the play concerns the other characters tiptoeing around and trying to figure out how to handle him. Most of the dialogue is standard American white trashese. There are a couple of monologs which, for me anyway, were not as effective. I would like to see this performed someday. It might be a little difficult though - the script calls for a live lamb.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to read more Same Shepard. I knew he was sort of cutting edge and Martin McDonagh-esque (ever since I saw Lonesome West in London in 1997 I consider all raw low class stuff to be McDonagh-esque), but had no read or seen any of his stuff. My eldest was assigned to read this play and so we read it out loud together. It is sad and funny and absurdist and makes a ton of great points about the "growth" of American and over-development and consumerism and limitations of self. But it was a bit preachy (some of the monologues could have been cut or left out and the points would still be there). Overall, though I enjoyed it and I want to read more.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If, say, an Arthur Miller play takes place on a plane once removed from what we call the real world, then a Sam Shepard play is perhaps two planes removed. At least that had been my perspective of Shepard's work. The Curse of the Starving Class isn't naturalistic in the traditional sense, but twenty-nine years after its first production, Shepard's dramatization of the Tate family's unraveling seems awfully prescient.

[Matt Martinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I've never seen it performed, I did enjoy reading this play, which is the first Shepard work I've read. It is brutal, bleak, and makes some powerful statements about the trap of poverty in America without being overly didactic.

[Molina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good.

[رضوى منصور · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can say that this is my first most favouried work among all the works I studied.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing play about the impossibility of escaping our roots.

[Behrouz · Rating 4 out of 5]

نفرین طبقه ی گرسنه سم شپارد نمایشنامه زیبا و عالی بود.
با ترجمه جناب منوچهر خاکسار هرسینی خوندم از انتشارات افراز
نمایش بعد از یک حادثه شروع میشه انجایی ک پدر خانواده(وستون) شب مست به خانه بر میگردد ولی مادر خانواده(الا) در را برای او قفل میکند در نتیجه پدر در را میشکند و می رود... نمایش از صبح این روز شروع میشود و شب در روایت پسر خانواده(وسلی) به صورت یک مونولوگ فوق العاده بیان میشود.در عین حال دختر خانواده(اما) ک تازه دوران بلوغ خود را شروع میکند و اولین بار است ک او پریود شده است و این موضوع مثل گروتسک در تمام نمایش جاری است.او مثل اسبی ک او را از پشت خود می انداز سرکش است انگار هر دو با هم عجین شده اند...

وسلی: من اونجاطاق باز دراز کشیده بودم.می تونستم شکوفه‌های آواکادو رو اسشتمام کنم. می تونستم زوزه ی گرگا و صدای ممتد خودروها رو از تو خیابون بشنوم...
همینجوری ک همه میدانیم قلم شپارد پر از کمدی وحشت و گروتسک می باشد. در عین حال روایتی تراژیک برای کارکترها ک همیشه تنها هستن صورت میگیرد ک چندین برابر نمایشنامه رو چشنواز تر میکند...
لذت بردم از شخصیت پردازی.
کارکترها از تیپ تبدیل میشن به شخصیت...
نوشته:بهروز توحیدی

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Same shit different place. Ends on the sister telling the brother A story their father often told them; of a cat being taken in the night by an eagle, taken to the open air, caged within it’s claws, the cat swipes at the eagle “tearing his chest out”, so the eagle tries to drop the cat, but the cat holds on so that it doesn’t plummet to the ground. So on. So fourth. Neat. #SoTrue

“The first time is great, but after that it gets pretty boring.” Okay so make stuff non boring, do stuff. #SoTrue

So like the grass isn’t greener anywhere, and i’m not sure what Shepard exactly proposes we do with that knowledge though (common knowledge anyway). Certainly not escape to Mexico as “that’s where everyone escapes to, right? It’s full of escape artists down there.” So hold your ground and maybe plant flowers to make the never-increasing-in-viridescence grass look a lil nicer to you and for others.

[Kristopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is good despairing Shepard craic. Weston is his best character I’ve seen him create yet. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be reborn and start over without the chickens of our past mistakes coming home to roost?

Social themes are very prevalent 40 years on especially regarding perceptions of American decline and the exploited lives of rural families who run the gamut of harboring escapist fantasies to Europe (like Ella) or perpetuating American frontier myths (like Wesley), but all suffer from the prying manipulations of the moneyed interests (either of the establishment like Taylor or of the frontier like Ellis) who have come to reap and condescend others for their own profit.

“That’s why you need a hard table once in a while to bring you back. A good hard table to bring you back to life.”

“The whole thing’s geared to invisible money.”

[avory · Rating 4 out of 5]

in like 2015, my roommate was having an affair with a married man who had, if not an outright drug "problem," then certainly a habit that was costly and problematic. he came in and hung out once before taking her out and he left a little saucer of drugs for me to do as a parting gift which i did and i stayed up until like 3am reading this a lie of the mind, and a couple other sam shepard plays. that's my unhelpful review.

definitely my favorite sam shepard. not sure if that's a hot take or not.

[Shecharchoret · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first play of the family trilogy by Shepard. I read Buried Child last year and read this last week but the similarities between the plays are hard to miss. we are reading again a dysfunctional family whose members have almost nothing common except for a blood relation. The family in the play consumes each other more every single day but can't leave each other like the eagle and cat story.
I like Shepard's messy, wracked families so this became one of my favorite plays of him.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without a doubt the best thing of Shepard's I've read so far, and I wouldn't be surprised to discover this is his crowning achievement. The characters are richly rendered, the metaphor and thematic material fully developed, and the humor witheringly grim throughout. An absolute masterpiece, and one of the best things I've ever read, full stop. It's all just so well considered. I didn't want it to end.

[Monty Muse · Rating 4 out of 5]

need to see a production of this immediately me thinks. damn sam shepard is just a slut for dysfunctional families tho and so am i so bro i love this guy! very interesting choice that he rly didn't divulge that much history of the family, he mostly focused on the present dynamic which obviously harbored LOTS of complex baggage so i loved the subtext !!

[basker ville · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Imagery. There are monologues in this play which are excellent training for actors and the skill of creative images for the audience. I love me a good ol’
family drama and intermingling of flaws of each family member.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay.

I just realized this is a play. I also realized that they do nudity in plays. I also realized that in this written play a young man pees in the kitchen onto the floor and later walks around in the nude...

So I don’t think I’d go watch this play.

Unless, of course, they censored those parts. Like put on some clothes boy and don’t actually take out your thingy and pee on the stage.

Call me a prude.

[Suheyla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bir tiyatro oyunu. Güzel kurgulanmış, dekoru ile gözünüzün önüne getirebileceğiniz sahneleri yerlı yerinde. Ve kapitalist sistemin amerikan rüyasını bambaşka bir pencereden öyle güzel anlatıyor ki, rüya birden kabusa dönüvermiş oluyor

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I recognize these characters. They are outlandish in some ways but frighteningly realistic in more. The concentration on food and the empty refrigerator is a good effect. I like it more than Buried Child but less than True West.

[Luke Hosford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another brutally realistic, uncompromising assault on the traditional American family. I liked this especially because he got a bit more explicit with his thoughts towards the end. Some truly horrible stuff in the middle though