THTR 101 UCSB Theater in San Francisco Sam Shepards True West Bond Essay

In True West, the characters obviously have a whole (though interrupted) history of being brothers, and in many moments we, in the audience, can tell that they are aware of their past–using it as a guide to how to operate in the present. Through the course of the play, but especially in the opening scenes, the audience has to catch up to what the characters already know. We have to piece together the information, but ultimately we are aimed in the same direction–to know/feel what it is to be–to act–in the present situation. The lives that these characters come from represent what Stanislavski calls the given circumstances. Use your deductive and evidence-seeking powers to put together some aspect of what has happened in the past lives of these characters and how that works on them in the present.