'A face like a mask': Themes of identity and theatricality in selected works of Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan

This study ("'A Face Like a Mask': Themes of identity and Theatricality in Selected Works of Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan") investigates the use of literal and figurative masks in selected works by Sam Shepard that are seen in relation to Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Of interest are collaborations and aesthetic intersections between the two artists. In a series of investigations identity is shown not to be based in a fixed origin but to be a performance of the self. The two authors' deliberate stagings of the self (both on the level of fictional character and biographical self) render the boundary between the private and the public, the true and and the false, the face and the mask meaningless. Identity emerges as a fluid concept; the face and the mask become inseparable and interchangeable. Personal and national identity appear as interlaced concerns. This is reflected in the two writers' treatment of American national myths with their contribution to national identity formation. In the authors' re-written versions of American myths these myths appear as simultaneously deconstructed and empowered.