Operation Sidewinder

by Sam Shepard

His third book about a sophisticated Air Force computer in the form of a huge snake which escapes to the American desert. Originally presented at Lincoln Center in New York City on March 12th, 1970 starring Andy Robinson and Roberts Blossom.

Genres: Plays, Drama

126 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

Sam Shepard was an American artist who worked as an award-winning playwright, writer and actor. His many written works are known for being frank and often absurd, as well as for having an authentic sense of the style and sensibility of the gritty modern American west. He was an actor of the stage and motion pictures; a director of stage and film; author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs; and a musician.

Reviews

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shockingly stupid play by young Shepard.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have been slowly (VERY slowly) working my way through Shepard's work chronologically over the past few years, and I figure I might as well log them one by one instead of logging the collections (since the readings of those are spread over several years at this point).

Anyway, this is available in the paperback copy of THE UNSEEN HAND AND OTHER PLAYS, and it apparently proved somewhat controversial at the time for the way Shepard portrays the black characters in this piece. It's obviously dated (the whole thing is dated), but I do think his treatment is at least consistent with his treatment of every other character present here, for what it's worth. Outside of the Native Americans, everyone's presented as myopic and foolish.

Ultimately didn't find this as successful as some of his other stuff (THE UNSEEN HAND comes to mind as a personal favorite), but it's still fairly solid conceptually, and a far cry from his more deliberately provocative early works. Here, the vulgarity has a clear purpose.

[Julian Munds · Rating 1 out of 5]

This play is terrible. It relies on stereotype. That's partly the point in that the stereotypes of the old west are being stamped out by the 1970s psychodelics and military machine. But it also pastoralizes native americans into primitives who don't understand tech and white blonde women into sex crazed pieces of meat.