TRUE WEST

The younger brother, Austin, is an ambitious screenwriter who is just about to break into Hollywood and make big money. The older brother, Lee, steals televisions and lives on the fringe of society. One believes in order, the other belongs to the desert. The younger knows what to sell to audiences, but the older knows how to get someone else to do the work for him while he cracks open a beer.

When the two meet under one roof in their empty mother’s house on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the dream of America as a land of opportunity turns into a battlefield. Suddenly, both have ideas for a screenplay to sell to Hollywood. Which idea will win? A darkly funny duel about brotherhood, ambition, and dreams begins.

The name of the legendary American playwright, screenwriter, and actor Sam Shepard needs no introduction. He wrote the screenplay for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point (1970), Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas (1984), and many other big-screen classics. His play True West, in which iconic actors have performed the roles, is being staged in Latvia for the first time.

The production is directed by the promising Polish-born director Mateusz Staniak, who works in Amsterdam and Brussels, with a Belgian and Latvian team.

The performance is created with the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and co-financing from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.