Sam Shepard—the cagey, mysterious author of “Buried Child” and “True West,” as well as something of a movie star, was our first cover boy in April 1984. Indeed, one of AT’s first coups was a revealing Q&A that a Harvard student, Amy Lippman, had done with the taciturn actor-writer the previous fall. There was no question about his image, said Cynthia Friedman, AT’s art director, 1984-1990. “It was kind of a no-brainer that year that we put Sam Shepard on the cover,” she said. “He was the ‘it’ guy then.” One unforeseen consequence, according to Lindy Zesch, TCG deputy director at the time: “It never occurred to me that you shouldn’t have a cigarette on the cover. You would not believe the mail we got—seriously.”
In November 1985, we published our first playscript in the magazine, as American Theatre’s predecessor, Theatre Arts, had done decades before. The first script: Emily Mann’s groundbreaking docu-theatre piece “Execution of Justice.” Including Luis Alfaro’s “The Travelers” in our Summer 2024 current issue, we’ve published a total of 188 plays in our 374 issues of the magazine.