Cowboy Mouth (play)
Cowboy Mouth is a 1971 play, written and performed by Sam Shepard (as Slim) and Patti Smith (as Cavale) and directed by Robert Glaudini.[1]
| Cowboy Mouth | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Sam Shepard Patti Smith |
| Characters | Slim (Sam Shepard) Cavale (Patti Smith) |
| Date premiered | April 29, 1971 |
| Place premiered | The American Place Theatre, New York City |
| Original language | English |
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 despite 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 theorizes that the American Dream does little more for the individual besides spoil his happiness.
Writing
In her book Just Kids, co-writer Smith details the writing of Cowboy Mouth near the conclusion of her relationship with Shepard. At Shepard's urging, the two retired to his room to write the play over the course of a night. Smith was reluctant to begin writing and write in conflict, but Shepard encouraged her to "Say anything. You can't make a mistake when you improvise." Smith wrote:
"Sam was right. It wasn't hard at all to write the play. We just told each other stories. The characters were ourselves, and we ecoded our love, imagination, and indiscretions in Cowboy Mouth. Perhaps it wasn't so much a play as a ritual. We ritualized the end of our adventure and created a portal of escape for Sam."[2]
Slim was the name Shepard used to introduced himself to Smith when the two of them met. Like Slim, Shepard was married and had an infant at the time he and Smith were in a relationship and wrote the play. Like Slim, Shepard returned to his family, though he did so on the third night of Cowboy Mouth.
Cavale's name comes from the book La Cavale, Smith's favorite book of the French-Algerian writer Albertine Sarrazin. "Cavale" means "escape" in French.[2]
References
- "29 April 1971". Retrieved 2008-03-19.
- Smith, Patti (2010). Just Kids. HarperCollins. pp. 184–186. ISBN 978-0-06-621131-2.