ella monologue curse of the starving class

It is morning. 28 Feb. 2023 . I could feel myself in my bed in my room in this house in this town in this state in this country. Sources By the time she enters the action, theres nothing left for her in the fridge, not even the chicken she raised so that she could kill it and cut it up as a demonstration for the 4-H Club. The last date is today's 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? Whenand where doesTheCurse of the Starving Class take place? 28 Feb. 2023 , Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Wesley returns, bloodied by Ellis. His mother, Ella enters, and Wesley and she talk about the events of the night before. Then, looking in that bloody fridge, he, like his children, finds nothing: zero! Wheels screaming off down hill. Log in here. Wesley leaves and Emma returns, covered in mud from being dragged by the horse. Ella believes that Emma has left on the horse, and is not overly concerned about her. No answer. Wesley and Ella talk about Westons eagle story as the play ends. Ella does not tell Emma that she plans to sell the house, but Emma tells Ella that she dreams of moving to Mexico and becoming a mechanic. Wesley asks her how she got out of jail and she tells him that she made sexual overtures at the guard. Gain full access to show guides, character breakdowns, auditions, monologues and more! Like several of Shepard's plays, Cures of the Starving Class explores family dysfunction in Western America. date the date you are citing the material. The entire upkeep of the farm falls on the shoulders of their idealistic son, Wesley, the only one who seems to have some hope for the family left. 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. Research Playwrights, Librettists, Composers and Lyricists. In a 1997 Paris Review interview, Shepard, whose own father was an alcoholic, made a powerful point about the men he grew up around. Emerson is a minor character who represents the men that Weston is in debt to. She often changes topics when she feels it in her best interest and tries to ignore the things going on immediately around her. The playwright Sam Shepards matter-of-fact observations about where his characters stand in the world tell us so much about the world they inhabit. Taylor leaves, and Wesley yells at the policeman to arrest him for being a confidence man. I could smell the avocado blossoms. . Westons only way of being a father is to exercise his paternal privileges, which, in Shepard-land, include wreaking havoc, fucking up your kids and your wife, and squandering the future; we learn by the second act that, in order to pay off loan sharks, Weston has already sold the property, to a bar owner named Ellis (Esau Pritchett, who has a lot of strength and appeal, though Kinney doesnt temper his performance, either). I could smell the avocado blossoms. Wesley enters and decides that Emma's project is pointless and that she ought to focus on more important things. Weston tells Ella to let Emma go and then there is a bright flash and a loud explosion from outside. Join the StageAgent community The second date is today's New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1981. Monologues. Taylor enters and talks with Emma, who calls him creepy. Wesley returns as Weston fills the refrigerator with artichokes he bought in the desert. Ellis represents the greed and controlling nature of business owners and the tendency of these people to take unfair advantage of each other and people below them. With James Woods, Kathy Bates, Randy Quaid, Henry Thomas. Wesley begins a monologue narrating exactly what he saw and heard happen from the night before. eNotes.com will help you with any book or any question. Inviting Wesley to have some breakfast, he tells him (as Wesley walks off) that he is reconsidering the idea of planting avocados. Christian H. Moe. Ella leaves with Taylor, telling Wesley to take the lamb with the maggots back outside. The drama is here to create an impact: whereas the realistic story of the family appeals to our minds and emotions, the symbols affect us on a subconscious level. Maggie Siff, as the wife of an abusive man, in Shepards story of a broken family. I am aware that I have taken on characters that are outside of my RACE, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, DIALECT, and AGE. Then no sound. Act two opens on Wesley and Emma in the kitchen, where Wesley is building a new front door for the house. Waiting to get out. Vol. Emma Tate is the daughter of Ella and Weston Tate. The cast was as follows: The play was revived Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre, running from July 30, 1985 to February 16, 1986. Another risk in weak productions of Shepards work is that directors will make too little or too much of his surrealism. Ella falls asleep on the table and Wesley, dressed in Westons old clothes, enters. 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. Weston is proud of Emma, saying that it takes guts to do something like that at her age. Today, Los Angeles is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world. Just from my Dad coming back. Even sleeping people I could feel. Take a look at our library of free monologues . Results may vary. Today: Feminism is in its third wave. As many of the issues feminists initially fought for have become law, feminist groups turn their sights on other issues. Watt, Douglas, In the End, Emptiness, in New York Daily News, March 3, 1978. Ellis, the owner of the Alibi Club walks into the house and sees Weston on the table. The curse on the family is described by both women as something that breeds internally in Weston and Wesley and is inevitable. All rights reserved. weve gone and left everything up to the old man again! Ella enters, asks why the lamb is back in the kitchen, and tells Weston that she has been at the jail, visiting Emma. Word Count: 713. As his mother fries him some bacon for breakfast, he recalls the images going through his mind as he lay in bed listening to the splintering of the door. Emma goes to the refrigerator and begins to look for her chicken. What Price Freedom? The New Republic 178 (April 8, 1978): 24-25. No sight. The play opens with Wesley putting pieces of a broken down door into a wheelbarrow. The prospect of selling the land to real estate developers has a significance far greater than the loss of a mere house, but his family. Ella sits up and screams, and Emma departs. DeRose, David J. Sam Shepard. 1 Mar. The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. Continue with Recommended Cookies, Home | The Curse Of The Starving Class Monologue (Wesley). Wesley enters, sets up a small fenced enclosure in the kitchen, exits, and reenters with a lamb. I could feel this country close like it was part of my bones. [6], The play was produced at Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, in February 2000, directed by Jim Simpson and featuring Kristine Nielsen, Guy Boyd, Mandy Siegfried, Danny Seckel, Paul Boocock, Ron Faber, Steve Mellor, Dan Moran and Chime Serra. 1. As she speaks, her daughter, Emma enters and joins the conversation in progress. Hes going to sleep there all night. On the one hand, I want you to experience the extraordinary power of Shepards alternately disciplined and unwieldy languagelanguage that pulsates with a unique imaginationbut, on the other, I dont want you to see and hear what Shepard brought to the American stage in less than ideal circumstances. Ella talks about the curse that is plaguing their family. Even the lamb suffers from an invasion of a harmful force in its body: maggots have infested its digestive tract. Heart pounding. Ellis enters, laughing at the passed-out Weston who is slumped on the kitchen table. (The set design is by Julian Crouch.) 353 subscribers Episode 10: Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class Sam Shepard wasn't just a playwright but an actor himself, fully into the arts. As she leaves, Ella wakes up, mistakes Wesley for Weston, and tells him to go after Emma because she's too young to leave on her own. His wife, Ella, is utterly burned-out and will do just about anything to leave her husband behind. The lights go down with him staring in the open fridge. It is morning. Center stage is a table, downstage a refrigerator and stove. Ella tries to take the money from Wesley, but he tells her there is not enough to go to Europe on. Weston tries to explain the poison to Wesley by comparing it to the way to you poison a coyote by putting strychnine in the belly of a dead lamb. New landPlymouth Rock, California, Alaska, or anywhere in betweenis settled and cleared for farming or industry by rugged individualist pioneers; more people move near that newly desirable land, and towns spring up; the towns grow so big and encroaching that the rugged individualists feel crowded by city life (or are unable, economically, to survive) and move on to find new frontiers. Act III King, Kimball. Michael and me -- well, we're closer than most brothers and sisters. He tells her that as he put them on he could feel his own essence slipping out of him, and his father's essence coming into him. Taylor then enters and Ella tells him what is happened. Then, far off the freeway could be heard. Then I hear the door of the Packard open. She appears to be the most bizarre character in the play, yet is also the most normal member of the family. While Wesley is bathing, Weston yells in to him that he agrees to become an avocado grower for the Grower's Association. As Wesley and Ella argue, Ella speaks of the curse she sees operating on the family. 2003 eNotes.com "Curse of the Starving Class - Bibliography" Great Characters in Literature 14. Kissel, Howard, Review of Curse of the Starving Class, in Womens Wear Daily, March 3, 1978. eNotes.com, Inc. After this outburst he passes out. 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. Emma is with him, and the two of them discuss the potential sale of the house and Ellas relationship with Taylor. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. As Ellis talks to them, they learn that Weston owes money to some pretty hard fellas. Wesley offers to take the money to those men, but Ella forbids it. Incapable of driving or holding a job, he is a profoundly unstable man controlled by the alcohol that runs in his system. 2023 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mother and son find out Weston is in debt to some dangerous men. But treating Shepards stage paradigms superficially can lead to characterizations that miss the point of how his figures got to be heartbroken or angry in the first place. In the fridge, she finds some bacon and bread and, as she fries up the last of the familys meat, Wesley thinks about himself and his father and recalls a memory: I was lying there on my back. Upgrade to PRO Act I If there are three dates, the first date is the date of the original In her attempt to steal the car, she is blown up with the car by the bomb that Slater puts in it. Bottoms, Stephen J., The Theatre of Sam Shepard: States of Crisis, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Gain full access to show guides, character breakdowns, auditions, monologues and more! Their conversation quickly turns to an issue of thematic importance: restlessness and dissatisfaction in heartland America. Ella tells Emma that the horse is crazy and that she is too young to leave home but Emma refuses to listen. Weston Tate is the father of the family and an abusive alcoholic. The second is the date of SymbolismCurse of the Starving Class uses symbolism a great deal, but Shepard uses it in a jarring way. Ella begins to yell at Weston for pulling a Jekyll and Hyde act by changing overnight. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. On May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial # in-depth-bibliography-bibliography-1 >, Last Updated on May,... Emma returns, covered in mud from being dragged by the alcohol that in... 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