Shepard Cancels Workshop; Delays Script for ART Show

Famous American playwrights Sam Shepard and Joe Chaikin this week put their script writing calibration on hold and cancelled a Loeb Drama Center workshop where their new script was to be performed.

"The reason this wasn't done as a workshop because it wasn't completed it wouldn't have meant anything to the audience," said Robert J. Orchard managing director of the American Repertory Theater (ART) and the Loeb.

Shepard and Chaikin worked for three weeks, but then found that the script could no longer benefit from the team, "Shepard has gone off to write it alone," Orchard said.

Shepard and Chaikin chose to work on the project here at Harvard because "they have people and resources they can up into more or less spontaneously," according to Orchard. "They wanted the freedom to experiment with different ideas," he added.

Harvard student composers, actors, and technicians worked with the playwrights. Students assisted with research for the script, based on a Mormon legend involving the story of an angel who falls from heaven and lands in Utah, according to Orchard.

The playwrights managed to lay down the foundation for a promising script, however, Robert Brustein, artistic director of the ART, said the creative proces was much more important than the workshop product.

"When two artists get together and decide they want to work together, they improvise, talk, and the project evolves," Brustein said.

This final script will be far more complex than other Shepard and Chaik in plays, such

The ART is hoping that Shepard will bring his work back to ZHarvard when the script is ready to be performed.

The ART is hoping that Shepard will bring his work back to ZHarvard when the script is ready to be performed.