Everything about Sam Shepard's "Operation Sidewinder" is important to our theatre. More than any recent major production, it is built upon exactly the style and the mentality energizing the youth movement in America today. It is conceived and written in the pop style, a sort of cross between pop art and McLuhanism. It is very cool. It incorporates this sense and look with those of pop art … and pop—in the same sense—music. It is very American in its feel, its concerns, its attitudes again a reflection of what's going on.

For all these things, Shepard's new play is important because it at last brings onto a stage what is so energetic in America today, giving the theatre a chance to be modern, to be relevant, to draw back those young audiences so long-lost (for good reason). It is important because its point of view, and the...