Cowboy Mouth is a 1971 play, written and performed by Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child...

 and Patti Smith

Patti Smith

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses....

, and directed by Robert Glaudini

Robert Glaudini

Robert Glaudini, who goes by the name Bob Glaudini, is an American actor, playwright, director and teacher who is father to actress Lola Glaudini. He wrote a hit off-Broadway play Jack Goes Boating directed by Peter DuBois and starring the actors: Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ortiz, Daphne...

.

Plot

The play is about Cavale and Slim, two absolute messes living in sin together. 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

French poetry

French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.-French prosody and poetics:...

. 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

The Ugly Duckling

"The Ugly Duckling" is a literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen . The story tells of a homely little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse from his neighbors until, much to his delight , he matures into a beautiful swan, the most beautiful bird of all...

 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 the Lobster Man for sustenance and entertainment. It's a play full of dichotomies

Dichotomy

A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...

, and easy swings from one extreme mindset to another. It theorizes that the American Dream

American Dream

The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...

 does little more for the individual besides spoil his happiness.

External links

• Cowboy Mouth
• Quote from the play
• Review at After Dark magazine
  After Dark (magazine)
  After Dark was an entertainment magazine that covered theatre, cinema, stage plays, ballet, performance art, and various artists, including singers, actors and actresses, and dancers, among others. First published in May 1968, the magazine succeeded Ballroom Dance Magazine...