Austin, an Ivy League-educated writer, returns to his childhood home outside Los Angeles, intent on selling his script to a Hollywood producer. His older brother Lee, a crude petty thief, turns up unexpectedly, also trying to sell a screenplay—an authentic and “true” American Western.

Perhaps the funniest play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shepard, TRUE WEST is an explosive exploration of family dysfunction, taking gleeful potshots at Hollywood, the myth of the cowboy and the American frontier, and other escape fantasies that define the American imagination.

Photo: Todd Alan Johnson and John Kuntz. Photo by Richard Feldman