Date premiered April 29, 1971 Original language English language | First performance 29 April 1971 | |
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Characters Slim (Sam Shepard),Cavale (Patti Smith) Places premiered The American Place Theatre, New York City Sam Shepard plays La Turista, The Tooth of Crime, Curse of the Starving, Simpatico | ||
cowboy mouth
Cowboy Mouth is a 1971 play, written and performed by Sam Shepard (as Slim) and Patti Smith (as Cavale), and directed by Robert Glaudini.
Contents
Plot
The play is about Slim and Cavale, two aspiring rock stars living in sin together. Cavale kidnapped Slim at gunpoint and held him captive in her motel room for an unspecified amount of time; the two have fallen in love, in spite of the fact that he has a wife and child in Brooklyn. Unable to move, yet at complete unrest, Slim swings from blaming Cavale for the disaster that is his life to begging her to tell him stories about French poets. Cavale is a former mental patient of some kind. She remembers electric shocks and having to wear metal plates around her club foot when she was younger. She also muses about playing the ugly duckling as a child, being forced into the role without even the satisfaction of emerging as a beautiful swan at the end. The two call on an imaginary Lobster Man for sustenance and entertainment. It's a play full of dichotomies, and easily swings from one extreme mindset to another. It theorizes that the American Dream does little more for the individual besides spoil his happiness.