"Curse of the Starving Class - Literary Style" Drama for Students The curse, as Ella puts it, of the Tate family is that they have nitroglycerine liquid dynamite running in their blood. The play closed on April 9, 1978. He compares it to a zombie invasion and takeover, where the zombies build their own city. Just sitting. Heart still pounding. She has just started her first period, and has several mood swings during the play. Taylor leaves, and Wesley yells at the policeman to arrest him for being a confidence man. Weston, slightly drunk, is a big man; he wears baggy pants, tennis shoes, an overcoat, and a baseball cap. Its themes include the struggle for dignity, moral obligations to family members, and the effect of money in America. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. They were Second World War veterans, he said, who were disappointed in a way that they didnt understand. Emma leaves; then Taylor and Ella leave for a business meeting. Wesley is left on stage, talking to the lamb, when Westons voice is heard outside. Emma and Wesley discuss whether their mother will come back, or whether she will run off to Mexico with Taylor. Act Two opens with siblings Emma and Wesley hard at work on tasks that are interestingly, stereotypically gender appropriate: Emma is recreating her charts on how to properly cut a frying chicken (since her brother pissed on them in the last act), and Wesley is rebuilding the door that his father broke down. Then stopping. Man cursing. He is a wicked man, a villain in the story. Weston tells Wesley that he has decided to stay and fix up the house instead of leaving, no matter who holds the deed. Vol. Emma then yells down that she is going to take the horse and leave. I could feel myself in my bed in my room in this house in this town in this state in this country. Man going insane. Wesley, who has been listening to this story, then asks what happens next. Who or what can fill these people up? Beaufort, John, Off-Broadway: Tale of a Blighted Family, in Christian Science Monitor, March 3, 1978. Also inevitable, and also treated as a curse, is Emmas menstruation (which is another image of the inside escaping to the outside). Having the set self-destruct is meant to indicate, of course, that trouble is on the way, but why make such an overdetermined move when Shepard clearly reveals, in the ensuing dialogue and action, how troubling the story were entering is? The men tell Wesley, still calling him Weston, that he is to pass on the warning to his father and they leave.
He looks at his parents; they do not notice him, and he leaves with the lamb. Ella talks about the curse that is plaguing their family. Ella re-enters with groceries and throws the artichokes on the floor. Bulls. Ella, in curlers, wearing a bathrobe, is angry with Weston for having broken the door during the night, but brightens at finding bread and bacon in the refrigerator. Ed. With James Woods, Kathy Bates, Randy Quaid, Henry Thomas. Lahr, John, A Ghost Town of the Imagination, in Village Voice, July 25, 1977, pp. The citation above will include either 2 or 3 dates. Can you send me character analysis of characters of Sam Shepard's play "Curse of the Starving Class"? 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. He advises Wesley to do the same. Directors and actors tend to latch onto the more obvious effects in Shepards writing, including the types of characters he returned to time and again: disgruntled drunk dads, battling spouses and siblings, forsaken lovers. Weston enters, even drunker than he was before. Word Count: 1530. New York: St. Martins Press, 1986. Man throwing up. Its humiliating to have the cops come, he says, whining a little. Me, the enemy. We are all a version of someone elses story. weve gone and left everything up to the old man again! Another risk in weak productions of Shepards work is that directors will make too little or too much of his surrealism. Taylor appears and tells Ella that he has the final draft of the deed of sale. Log in here. We're what the school psychologist calls -- products of a broken home. Taking pictures of the enemy. Monologues for Females: THAT DAY (adapted from Inside/Out by Michael Scanlon). Wood splitting. Ellis enters, laughing at the passed-out Weston who is slumped on the kitchen table. On the other hand, all the members of the family, except for Ella, are given long monologues which are almost soliloquies. (The set design is by Julian Crouch.) When Weston finally comes home, carrying a bag of artichokes that nobody really wants to eat, he discovers a live lamb that Wesley brought in because it has maggots. Act two opens on Wesley and Emma in the kitchen, where Wesley is building a new front door for the house. It is the next day. Still, Ella and Wesley both convey their hurt and their ambivalence toward Westons power over them. 2003 eNotes.com Then crying softly. I picture him just sitting. Foot kicking door. New York, NY, Accessibility Statement Terms Privacy |StageAgent 2020. "Curse of the Starving Class - Media Adaptations" Drama for Students *Our system only provides suggested monologues or songs for select characters if we have matching monologues and song information in our database. "Curse of the Starving Class - Compare and Contrast" Drama for Students I could feel this country close like it was part of my bones. Wesley refuses to stop Emma, and Ella begins to tell him about her plans to sell the house. 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 act ends with Weston (finally) waking up with a start, and Ella running out of the house. 14. . Word Count: 57. Like several of Shepard's plays, Cures of the Starving Class explores family dysfunction in Western America. I could smell the avocado blossoms. The play ends as Wesley, his back to his mother, concludes the story. Ellis, the owner of the bar where Weston drinks, enters with $1500 and says he owes Weston for the sale of the house; Ella orders her son to throw him out. 28 Feb. 2023 , Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. "Curse of the Starving Class - Bibliography" Great Characters in Literature How old is Wesley in "Curse ofthe Starving Class"? Caught up in this are families such as the one in Curse of the Starving Class, whose land is coveted by subdivision developers like Taylor. Acts 1 and 2 both begin with characters engaged in simple question-and-answer conversations which serve to provide expository information necessary to an understanding of what has occurred before the start of the play or between the acts. Obviously, these two motifs are related to each other, for disease is the intrusion of an entity that should be kept outside the body. Wesley says that Emma doesn't want to do it just because she is on the rag, so she throws down her markers and gets up to add the water. Taylor argues that Weston is legally incompetent to sell the house and boasts that he has corporations and executive management behind him. Kauffmann, Stanley. DeRose, David J., Sam Shepard, Twayne, 1962. They tell him that they have blown up the car with Emma in it. to read our character analysis for Ella Tate and unlock other amazing theatre resources! eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Wesley tells him that he ran into a brick wall. Then no moving. Sergeant Malcom is the police officer who arrives at the house to inform Ella that Emma has been arrested for riding a horse into the Alibi Club and shooting it up. Sam Shepards Curse of the Starving Class is a darkly comic look into the world of dysfunctional Tate family, as they struggle amongst themselves for food, freedom, and meaning in their run-down lives. New York, NY, Linda Ray
Ever more land was needed, and the developers set their sights to the farmlands surrounding the city. The play alludes to the golden age of motoring when Ella's prized Packard is mentioned, and also blown up, which signifies the . He tells Wesley and Emma that he has already purchased the house from Weston and shows them the cash. SymbolismCurse of the Starving Class uses symbolism a great deal, but Shepard uses it in a jarring way. Then WESLEY'S mother, ELLA, enters slowly from down left. men who came back from the war, had to settle down, raise a family and send the kids to schooland they just couldnt handle it. That was what Shepard knew as a boy. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. Ella enters, asks why the lamb is back in the kitchen, and tells Weston that she has been at the jail, visiting Emma. The second is the date of Hes slept there before. Disclaimer: Some of the articles on Mighty Actor include affiliate links to sites like Amazon, Skillshare, and others. Throwing the artichokes out, she fills the refrigerator. They menace the family a little and leave. When Kinneys staging of Curse begins, we hear snatches of rock and roll as the lights come up on a large, dirty kitchen whose door to the outside world has been busted in. Taylor, a land developer, is courting Ella. At times, Wesley loses patience with his family members, as evidenced by his lack of sympathy for his sister's ruined 4-H project, to which he responds by urinating on her charts and suggesting that his sister do something truly useful with her time. Ella finally enters and says that she is going on a business luncheon with Taylor. 2023 Cond Nast. Ella returns with groceries that Taylor has bought for the family and throws out the artichokes. Download the entire Curse of the Starving Class study guide as a printable PDF! 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