Sam Shepard, Actor and Pulitzer-Winning Playwright, Is Dead at 73<br />Mr. Shepard wrote or collaborated on screenplays for, among others, the directors Michaelangelo Antonioni (“Zabriskie Point,” 1970), Robert Frank (“Me<br />and My Brother,” 1969) and Wim Wenders (“Paris, Texas,” which won the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival).<br />He said, ‘If they’re in the pocket, they can do it standing on their heads.’ ”<br />Mr. Aukin said Mr. Shepard told him of his illness before they began working on the production, as he did with at least one other recent collaborator.<br />Mr. Shepard wrote more than 55 plays (his last, “A Particle of Dread,” premiered in<br />2014), acted in more than 50 films and had more than a dozen roles on television.<br />Cast members in Shepard plays are often required to tear down the set, literally (in his early<br />“La Turista,” a young man walked through a wall), and engage in highly physical fights.<br />Christopher Shinn, whose plays include the Pulitzer finalist “Dying City,” said he was reminded<br />of Mr. Shepard’s gifts as a writer while watching “Buried Child” Off Broadway last year.<br />“I felt the play pulsing with Sam Shepard’s unconscious, and I realized how rarely I feel that in the theater today,” Mr. Shinn said on Monday.
