A Lie of the Mind

Hailed recently by the New York Times as the playwright’s “richest and most penetrating play, a 20th-century masterwork of a family portrait,” A Lie of the Mind showcases the craftsmanship of Sam Shepard’s storytelling at his most poetic, most poignant and most striking. Brimming with enormous vitality and humor, the play alternates between two families joined together by marriage and torn apart by a life-changing incident. Excavating our ideas of the American family, the play asks us to look deeper into the human heart and the destructive power of love. “Sam Shepard is surely the only dramatist alive who could tell a story as sad and frightening as this one and make such a funny play of it without ever skimping on its emotional depth.” (The New Yorker) Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award.