''Icarus' Mother'' is a

one-act A one-act play is a play that has only one act, as distinct from plays that occur over several acts. One-act plays may consist of one or more scenes. The 20-40 minute play has emerged as a popular subgenre of the one-act play, especially in writi ...

play by

Sam Shepard Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, ...

. It was first staged at the

Caffe Cino Caffe Cino was an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1958 by Joe Cino. The West Village coffeehouse, located at 31 Cornelia Street, was initially conceived as a venue for poetry, folk music, and visual art exhibitions. The plays produced at th ...

in 1965,

directed Direct may refer to: Mathematics * Directed set, in order theory * Direct limit of (pre), sheaves * Direct sum of modules, a construction in abstract algebra which combines several vector spaces Computing * Direct access (disambiguation), a ...

by Michael Smith, a

drama critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governmen ...

, with a cast that included John Coe, a veteran of the Living Theatre. It was included in the first published collection of Shepard's play scripts, entitled ''Five Plays'' (1966).

Overview

As the play opens, a group of five people (three men, two women) are digesting a big picnic meal and belching. They are lying on a lawn near a beach, while waiting for a fireworks display to begin. Although the characters don't specifically mention the Fourth of July, a number of patriotic references are used. A jet plane is flying overhead. Various kinds of funny but tense conflicts,

word games A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its ...

, and

mind game Mind games (also power games or head games) are actions performed for reasons of psychological one-upmanship, often employing passive–aggressive behavior to specifically demoralize or dis-empower the thinking subject, making the aggressor l ...

s take place among the group. Two of the men, Howard and Bill, seem to be conspiring against the others. They send up

smoke signals The smoke signal is one of the oldest forms of long-distance communication. It is a form of visual communication used over a long distance. In general smoke signals are used to transmit news, signal danger, or to gather people to a common area. ...

three times from a barbecue while the others are absent and hide the fact that they're doing this. There's no explanation as to why they're sending up the signals or what the signals are supposed to mean. The two women, Pat and Jill, who have been off stage, return to boast that they have been stripping and shimmying, in an attempt to distract the jet pilot. Just as the fireworks begin, the jet plane crashes nearby, sending the other man, Frank, into an extended verbal spasm, indicating he may be on drugs or has lost his mind. His lengthy monologue contains some inspired poetry, especially among Shepard's early plays. At the end of his speech Frank staggers off stage, deeply lost and confused, while bellowing that he has just seen something memorable and historic. Pat and Jill run across the stage, announcing wildly that the jet plane has crashed. Possibly frightened and trying to comfort each other, although they could just as easily be gloating about their success, Howard and Bill silently hold hands and stare at the audience, as the offstage fireworks continue and the play ends.

References

{{Sam Shepard 1965 plays Plays by Sam Shepard