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Buried Child
revised edition of the three act play
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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5593 people want to read
About the author
Sam Shepard
227 books667 followersSam Shepard was an American artist who worked as an award-winning playwright, writer and actor. His many written works are known for being frank and often absurd, as well as for having an authentic sense of the style and sensibility of the gritty modern American west. He was an actor of the stage and motion pictures; a director of stage and film; author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs; and a musician.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 352 reviews
August 22, 2025
You can't force a thing to grow. You can't interfere with it. It's all hidden. It's all unseen. You just gotta wait til it pops up out of the ground. Tiny little shoot. Tiny little white shoot. All hairy and fragile. Strong enough. Strong enough to break the earth even. It's a miracle.
Buried Child ~~ Sam Shepard
I recently reread this for the first time in many years. I had assigned it to some of my acting students for a script analysis class, since I wanted to revisit it. Revisiting it as an adult was a powerful experience. It touched a nerve in me that had not yet been exposed in my youth.
Buried Child is a darkly comic portrait of a family brought to its knees by incest, betrayal, adultery, and murder. Shepard draws us into a surreal farmland home. This family could be the bastard children of Antonin Artaud & Luis Buñuel. This is definitely not Norman Rockwell’s America.
We are introduced to a bible-beating-yet-philandering matriarch, an incapacitated-yet-smart-mouthed patriarch, a traumatized eldest son freshly home from a mysteriously diabolical escapade in New Mexico, and a youngest son with both a superiority complex and a wooden leg. These characters are unveiled as ghosts of their former selves during a visitation by a long lost grandson and his girlfriend. None of these characters escapes Shepard’s grotesque world unscathed.
Clever and witty, Shepard crafts a sharp dissection of heritage, family; we learn in the most horrific way “the past is passed” is far from the truth. Nearly 40 years later, Shepard’s tale is as disturbingly relevant to all those who feel confined by the constraints and expectations of family.
In the end we left wondering who is the buried child?
Buried Child ~~ Sam Shepard
I recently reread this for the first time in many years. I had assigned it to some of my acting students for a script analysis class, since I wanted to revisit it. Revisiting it as an adult was a powerful experience. It touched a nerve in me that had not yet been exposed in my youth.
Buried Child is a darkly comic portrait of a family brought to its knees by incest, betrayal, adultery, and murder. Shepard draws us into a surreal farmland home. This family could be the bastard children of Antonin Artaud & Luis Buñuel. This is definitely not Norman Rockwell’s America.
We are introduced to a bible-beating-yet-philandering matriarch, an incapacitated-yet-smart-mouthed patriarch, a traumatized eldest son freshly home from a mysteriously diabolical escapade in New Mexico, and a youngest son with both a superiority complex and a wooden leg. These characters are unveiled as ghosts of their former selves during a visitation by a long lost grandson and his girlfriend. None of these characters escapes Shepard’s grotesque world unscathed.
Clever and witty, Shepard crafts a sharp dissection of heritage, family; we learn in the most horrific way “the past is passed” is far from the truth. Nearly 40 years later, Shepard’s tale is as disturbingly relevant to all those who feel confined by the constraints and expectations of family.
In the end we left wondering who is the buried child?
October 5, 2024
We can't not believe in something. We can't stop believing. We just end up dying if we stop. Just end up dead.
Buried Child is a tragic play in three acts and revolves around the themes of lost dreams and desires, dismay, disillusionment and family disorder and unreliability.
It is a story about the dissolution and disintegration of the structure of the 'traditional family' and religious and moral values.
Buried Child may confuse you, it may play with your emotions, make you doubt your sanity and lead you to darkness and despair.
It may create more questions than answers.
And you may want to read it again, to understand it better.
Buried Child is a tragic play in three acts and revolves around the themes of lost dreams and desires, dismay, disillusionment and family disorder and unreliability.
It is a story about the dissolution and disintegration of the structure of the 'traditional family' and religious and moral values.
Buried Child may confuse you, it may play with your emotions, make you doubt your sanity and lead you to darkness and despair.
It may create more questions than answers.
And you may want to read it again, to understand it better.
February 10, 2020
Since I read Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey that deals with the last days she spent with her lifelong friend Sam Shepard, I thought I’d read/listen to a couple of his plays again. The two I have re-read so far were seen as part of his “family” trilogy, True West, and then this, which was the play that catapulted him to fame and many honors, and it’s really good.
It’s the story of 22-year-old Vince who comes home from New York to Illinois to see his family after 6 years. When he gets there girlfriend Shelly wants to leave, as she is uncomfortable with drunk Grandpa Dodge and crazy Dad Tilden, both of whom don’t seem to recognize him. Allusions are made to some “buried” child and no one wants to talk about it. But we do find out (yeah, okay, there is a buried child, but it’s both straightforward and possibly more complicated). And Grandma Hailie seems to be having a relationship with a priest, her son Bradley lost his leg to a tractor accident. Maybe there’s some miracle involving corn. . .
It’s a great play about rural economic decline, the breakdown of the traditional family, madness. Crazy, funny, darkly sad, akin to both Hunter Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Zoo Story) in places, with a couple of doses of surrealism/hyper-reality. This is the one to read if you want to read one play sometime from Shepard, I think.
It’s the story of 22-year-old Vince who comes home from New York to Illinois to see his family after 6 years. When he gets there girlfriend Shelly wants to leave, as she is uncomfortable with drunk Grandpa Dodge and crazy Dad Tilden, both of whom don’t seem to recognize him. Allusions are made to some “buried” child and no one wants to talk about it. But we do find out (yeah, okay, there is a buried child, but it’s both straightforward and possibly more complicated). And Grandma Hailie seems to be having a relationship with a priest, her son Bradley lost his leg to a tractor accident. Maybe there’s some miracle involving corn. . .
It’s a great play about rural economic decline, the breakdown of the traditional family, madness. Crazy, funny, darkly sad, akin to both Hunter Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Zoo Story) in places, with a couple of doses of surrealism/hyper-reality. This is the one to read if you want to read one play sometime from Shepard, I think.
September 2, 2017
This month's literary jack-in-the-box to pop out of the reading group I participate in (The Dive Bar Book Club OC) is the play Buried Child by late actor/playwright Sam Shepard. First produced at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco on June 27, 1978 and in New York City at the Theatre for the New City later that year, an off-Broadway production in 2016 featured Ed Harris in the role of Dodge, an old timer withering away on a sofa while his hen pecking wife Halie (played by Harris' wife Amy Madigan in that production) tries to keep a secret from ripping what remains of the family apart when they receive a surprise visitor.
This is the first non-Shakespeare play I've read, but I was able to follow my system of streaming a staging of the play and then reading it. Reading scripts without seeing the play or film is like reading the owner's manual for a car without going for a test drive and over time, has proven a very good system for studying Shakespeare as well as buying cars. My goal for reading Sam Shepard was to forget that I was reading a Sam Shepard play, who everyone seems to agree was a great American playwright and whose drama I wanted to appreciate, having been an admirer of his stoic character work in classic films like Days of Heaven, Resurrection and The Right Stuff.
There were aspects I did like about the play. Set in present day Illinois, where anywhere not Chicago or its suburbs might be considered "country," the story does focus on the heartland, a farming family whose fortunes took a turn for the worst at some point in the past and is rotting from the core. Its dying patriarch Dodge is laid up on the sofa, smoking cigarettes or sneaking nips of whiskey from a bottle he's hidden, while his God fearing wife Halie leaves for a night out with her priest, placing Dodge in the care of their oldest surviving son Tilden, a man in his forties who has moved back home, unable to function on his own. Tilden seems obsessed with picking vegetables.
DODGE: You go and take that corn back to wherever you got it from!
TILDEN: (After pause, staring at DODGE) It's picked. I picked it all in the rain. Once it's picked you can't put it back.
DODGE: I haven't had trouble with neighbors here for fifty-seven years. I don't even know who the neighbors are! And I don't wanna know! Now go and put that corn back where it came from!
TILDEN stares at DODGE then walks slowly over to him and dumps all the corn on DODGE's lap and steps back. DODGE stares at the corn then back to TILDEN. Long pause.
DODGE: Are you having trouble here, Tilden? Are you in some kind of trouble?
TILDEN: I'm not in any trouble.
DODGE: You can tell me if you are. I'm still your father.
TILDEN: I know you're my father.
DODGE: I know you had a little trouble back in New Mexico. That's why you came out here.
Out of the rain, Dodge receives visitors: a boy named Vince and his girlfriend Shelly. Vince is on his way to New Mexico and has insisted on stopping at all the places of his youth, including the home of his grandparents, who like the rest of his family, Vince has not seen in six years. Dodge doesn't seem to recognize his grandson, while Tilden clearly doesn't place the familiar face with anyone whose father he might be when he enters. Shelly begins to wonder whether Vince has the right house. Wanting to be accepted by his family, Vince agrees to make a run to the liquor store for Dodge, leaving Shelly alone with his grandfather and father.
They're soon joined by Dodge's other broken, surviving son, Bradley, whose leg has been amputated and is only able to function physically as well as Tilden can function emotionally. Before his brother can confide a secret to Shelly, Bradley runs him off and menaces his nephew's girlfriend physically. When Vince fails to return, she spends the night. In the morning, Dodge assures Shelly that Bradley is harmless once you take his leg away. She fixes the old timer a cup of beef bullion in an effort to improve his spirits. Halie ultimately returns with Father Dewis and wont' stand for Shelly in the house, asking questions. Dodge finally decides to have it out with a family secret.
SHELLY: I'm not sure I want to find out now.
DODGE (laughing to himself) Listen to her! Now she's runnin' scared!
SHELLY: I'm not scared!
DODGE stops laughing, long pause. DODGE stares at her.
DODGE: You're not huh? Well, that's good. Because I'm not either. See, we were a well established family once. Well established. All the boys were grown. That farm was producing enough milk to fill Lake Michigan twice over. Me and Halie here were pointed toward what looked like the middle part of our life. Everything was settled with us. All we had to do was ride it out. Then Halie got pregnant again. Outa' the middle of nowhere, she got pregnant. We weren't planning on havin' any more boys. We had enough boys already. In fact, we hadn't been sleepin' in the same bed for about six years.
HALIE: (moving toward stairs) I'm not listening to this! I don't have to listen to this!
DODGE: (stops HALIE). Where are you going! Upstairs! You'll just be listenin' to it upstairs! You go outside, you'll be listenin' to it outside. Might as well stay here and listen to it.
HALIE stays by stairs.
BRADLEY: If I had my leg you wouldn't be saying this. You'd never get away with it if I had my leg.
DODGE: (pointing to SHELLY) She's got your leg. (laughs) She's gonna keep your leg too. (to SHELLY) She wants to hear this. Don't you?
SHELLY: I don't know.
In addition to the rural setting of Buried Child, I liked Shepard's robust mix of tragedy and some comedy, piousness and sin, sobriety and drunkenness, self-restraint and lust. It wasn't anything that knocked me down a flight of stairs, but I did find Dodge to be a compelling character who ends up exactly where a lot of people do in their finals days, bitter at being dependent on others but not wanting to be left alone either. In addition to the family secret, which there was nothing remarkable about the dialogue, but it held my interest up to a point. The final scene went over-the-top for me and didn't really affect me.
This is the first non-Shakespeare play I've read, but I was able to follow my system of streaming a staging of the play and then reading it. Reading scripts without seeing the play or film is like reading the owner's manual for a car without going for a test drive and over time, has proven a very good system for studying Shakespeare as well as buying cars. My goal for reading Sam Shepard was to forget that I was reading a Sam Shepard play, who everyone seems to agree was a great American playwright and whose drama I wanted to appreciate, having been an admirer of his stoic character work in classic films like Days of Heaven, Resurrection and The Right Stuff.
There were aspects I did like about the play. Set in present day Illinois, where anywhere not Chicago or its suburbs might be considered "country," the story does focus on the heartland, a farming family whose fortunes took a turn for the worst at some point in the past and is rotting from the core. Its dying patriarch Dodge is laid up on the sofa, smoking cigarettes or sneaking nips of whiskey from a bottle he's hidden, while his God fearing wife Halie leaves for a night out with her priest, placing Dodge in the care of their oldest surviving son Tilden, a man in his forties who has moved back home, unable to function on his own. Tilden seems obsessed with picking vegetables.
DODGE: You go and take that corn back to wherever you got it from!
TILDEN: (After pause, staring at DODGE) It's picked. I picked it all in the rain. Once it's picked you can't put it back.
DODGE: I haven't had trouble with neighbors here for fifty-seven years. I don't even know who the neighbors are! And I don't wanna know! Now go and put that corn back where it came from!
TILDEN stares at DODGE then walks slowly over to him and dumps all the corn on DODGE's lap and steps back. DODGE stares at the corn then back to TILDEN. Long pause.
DODGE: Are you having trouble here, Tilden? Are you in some kind of trouble?
TILDEN: I'm not in any trouble.
DODGE: You can tell me if you are. I'm still your father.
TILDEN: I know you're my father.
DODGE: I know you had a little trouble back in New Mexico. That's why you came out here.
Out of the rain, Dodge receives visitors: a boy named Vince and his girlfriend Shelly. Vince is on his way to New Mexico and has insisted on stopping at all the places of his youth, including the home of his grandparents, who like the rest of his family, Vince has not seen in six years. Dodge doesn't seem to recognize his grandson, while Tilden clearly doesn't place the familiar face with anyone whose father he might be when he enters. Shelly begins to wonder whether Vince has the right house. Wanting to be accepted by his family, Vince agrees to make a run to the liquor store for Dodge, leaving Shelly alone with his grandfather and father.
They're soon joined by Dodge's other broken, surviving son, Bradley, whose leg has been amputated and is only able to function physically as well as Tilden can function emotionally. Before his brother can confide a secret to Shelly, Bradley runs him off and menaces his nephew's girlfriend physically. When Vince fails to return, she spends the night. In the morning, Dodge assures Shelly that Bradley is harmless once you take his leg away. She fixes the old timer a cup of beef bullion in an effort to improve his spirits. Halie ultimately returns with Father Dewis and wont' stand for Shelly in the house, asking questions. Dodge finally decides to have it out with a family secret.
SHELLY: I'm not sure I want to find out now.
DODGE (laughing to himself) Listen to her! Now she's runnin' scared!
SHELLY: I'm not scared!
DODGE stops laughing, long pause. DODGE stares at her.
DODGE: You're not huh? Well, that's good. Because I'm not either. See, we were a well established family once. Well established. All the boys were grown. That farm was producing enough milk to fill Lake Michigan twice over. Me and Halie here were pointed toward what looked like the middle part of our life. Everything was settled with us. All we had to do was ride it out. Then Halie got pregnant again. Outa' the middle of nowhere, she got pregnant. We weren't planning on havin' any more boys. We had enough boys already. In fact, we hadn't been sleepin' in the same bed for about six years.
HALIE: (moving toward stairs) I'm not listening to this! I don't have to listen to this!
DODGE: (stops HALIE). Where are you going! Upstairs! You'll just be listenin' to it upstairs! You go outside, you'll be listenin' to it outside. Might as well stay here and listen to it.
HALIE stays by stairs.
BRADLEY: If I had my leg you wouldn't be saying this. You'd never get away with it if I had my leg.
DODGE: (pointing to SHELLY) She's got your leg. (laughs) She's gonna keep your leg too. (to SHELLY) She wants to hear this. Don't you?
SHELLY: I don't know.
In addition to the rural setting of Buried Child, I liked Shepard's robust mix of tragedy and some comedy, piousness and sin, sobriety and drunkenness, self-restraint and lust. It wasn't anything that knocked me down a flight of stairs, but I did find Dodge to be a compelling character who ends up exactly where a lot of people do in their finals days, bitter at being dependent on others but not wanting to be left alone either. In addition to the family secret, which there was nothing remarkable about the dialogue, but it held my interest up to a point. The final scene went over-the-top for me and didn't really affect me.
August 4, 2020
A dark story about the decline of an American way of life and a family, that has gotten left behind within the changing times, losing themselves in a blur of treachery, self-denial and retribution that threatens to extend through the generations backward and forward.
December 21, 2015
Reader: "Book? Hey, book?"
Book: *dozing on the couch* *waking up* "Huh? Who are you? Why are you in my house?"
Reader: "YOUR house? Book, you are in my house."
Book: "Who are you? What're ya doing here?"
Reader: "Oh, stop fooling around already."
Book: "You're the one who's fooling. Where are ya from?"
Reader: "Hamburg, as you well know."
Book: "Dumb country."
Reader: "It's a city..."
Book: "Even dumber."
Reader: "Book, where's your bookmark?"
Book: "Bookmark? What bookmark? What's it to you?"
Reader: "I'm your reader, that's what it's to me."
Book: "Reader? I ain't got no reader."
Reader: "You're a book. You always have a reader."
Book: "Where's this useless cover gone to again? Have you seen it? Tell it to come back! It promised to buy me booze!"
Reader: "Book, you can't drink!"
Book: "Course I can drink! I drink all day if I goddamn want to! Where's my booze?!"
Reader: "Not here, it seems."
Book: "Well then, go where it is and bring it here."
Reader: "Book, don't you recognise me?"
Book: "Why? Never seen you in my life. Who are you?"
Reader: "Your! Reader!"
Book: "I ain't got no reader!"
Reader: "You're a book, you need a reader!"
Book: "I don't goddamn need a reader! I ate the last one! Drowned it in my own pages, I tell ya!"
Reader: "Well, I'm obviously still alive, aren't I?"
Book: "Alive? Who? Who are you?"
Reader: "Oh, fuck it..." *shakes head and trots off of stage*
Book: "Booze! There's my booze!" *takes up a bottle hidden under the couch and drinks it* *drowns*
(Curtain)
Book: *dozing on the couch* *waking up* "Huh? Who are you? Why are you in my house?"
Reader: "YOUR house? Book, you are in my house."
Book: "Who are you? What're ya doing here?"
Reader: "Oh, stop fooling around already."
Book: "You're the one who's fooling. Where are ya from?"
Reader: "Hamburg, as you well know."
Book: "Dumb country."
Reader: "It's a city..."
Book: "Even dumber."
Reader: "Book, where's your bookmark?"
Book: "Bookmark? What bookmark? What's it to you?"
Reader: "I'm your reader, that's what it's to me."
Book: "Reader? I ain't got no reader."
Reader: "You're a book. You always have a reader."
Book: "Where's this useless cover gone to again? Have you seen it? Tell it to come back! It promised to buy me booze!"
Reader: "Book, you can't drink!"
Book: "Course I can drink! I drink all day if I goddamn want to! Where's my booze?!"
Reader: "Not here, it seems."
Book: "Well then, go where it is and bring it here."
Reader: "Book, don't you recognise me?"
Book: "Why? Never seen you in my life. Who are you?"
Reader: "Your! Reader!"
Book: "I ain't got no reader!"
Reader: "You're a book, you need a reader!"
Book: "I don't goddamn need a reader! I ate the last one! Drowned it in my own pages, I tell ya!"
Reader: "Well, I'm obviously still alive, aren't I?"
Book: "Alive? Who? Who are you?"
Reader: "Oh, fuck it..." *shakes head and trots off of stage*
Book: "Booze! There's my booze!" *takes up a bottle hidden under the couch and drinks it* *drowns*
(Curtain)
January 30, 2020
«کودک مدفون» اولین کاریه که از سم شپارد خوندم و به همین خاطر با تکنیکها و یا قلمش آشنایی ندارم؛ اما نمایشنامه راجع به فروپاشیدن خانوادهای بعد از یک حادثهی هولناکه. خانوادهای که جز لاشهای گندیده ازش چیزی باقی نمونده و تمامی اعضای اون در عین انزجار، مجبورن به خاطر ادامه یافتن حیاتشون هم رو تحمل کنن. چیزی که سم شپارد در طول داستان و به خصوص آخر ماجرا بر روش تاکید داره اینه که این وضع اسفبار هیچجایی تموم نمیشه و تمامی اتفاقها و تصمیمها به صورت موروثی ادامه خواهد یافت.
May 8, 2019
نمایشنامهی معمولیای بود و نمونهای بود از نمایشنامههای آمریکایی قرن بیستم که سردمدارشون آرتور میلر و تنسی ویلیامز هستن... اما جالبه که اون موقع چقدر آمریکاییها از خانواده عاصی بودن و چقدر نمایشنامه با موضوع مشکلات درون خانواده دارند
November 28, 2016
I've heard about this play a while ago when a friend went to watch it and left the theatre perplexed about it. I read a little about Sam Shepard's work and it all started to fit.
Buried Child is a dark and twisted play which talks about adultery, betrayal, murder and even incest. Deeper than this subjects, the dysfunctional family has a secret buried, one which will soon be revealed after so much plough of the arid terrain in which it was buried.
An incredible play for anyone who wants to be shocked by this family dysfunctionality and secrets.
“You can't force a thing to grow. You can't interfere with it. It's all hidden. It's all unseen. You just gotta wait til it pops up out of the ground. Tiny little shoot. Tiny little white shoot. All hairy and fragile. Strong enough. Strong enough to break the earth even. It's a miracle.”
Buried Child is a dark and twisted play which talks about adultery, betrayal, murder and even incest. Deeper than this subjects, the dysfunctional family has a secret buried, one which will soon be revealed after so much plough of the arid terrain in which it was buried.
An incredible play for anyone who wants to be shocked by this family dysfunctionality and secrets.
“You can't force a thing to grow. You can't interfere with it. It's all hidden. It's all unseen. You just gotta wait til it pops up out of the ground. Tiny little shoot. Tiny little white shoot. All hairy and fragile. Strong enough. Strong enough to break the earth even. It's a miracle.”
December 16, 2015
December of Drama 2015, day fifteen
"The other night we went to see Sam's play,
(Doin' the things that we want to)
It was very physical. It held you to the stage.
(Doin' the things that he wants to)"
--Doin' the Things that We Want to, by Lou Reed
Alright, so maybe I will start using relevant lyrics to open my reviews. I'm pretty sure that song is referring to a different Sam Shepard play but it nevertheless applies to this one. You just can't look away. Buried Child is poetic and surprising, brutal and uncompromising. As surreal as it gets, it still feels totally honest, reflecting a universal truth about the way families (mis)behave. There are incredible scenes, and some brilliant (I think the word is 'incisive') dialogue to go with them. Of course personally, with my dark philosophy, I mostly related to Dodge's cynicism, but one can easily see why this might be a favorite for actors-- every character has great moments. Gary Sinise apparently directed a revival and it's no surprise that he was drawn to it. Instant classic.
"The other night we went to see Sam's play,
(Doin' the things that we want to)
It was very physical. It held you to the stage.
(Doin' the things that he wants to)"
--Doin' the Things that We Want to, by Lou Reed
Alright, so maybe I will start using relevant lyrics to open my reviews. I'm pretty sure that song is referring to a different Sam Shepard play but it nevertheless applies to this one. You just can't look away. Buried Child is poetic and surprising, brutal and uncompromising. As surreal as it gets, it still feels totally honest, reflecting a universal truth about the way families (mis)behave. There are incredible scenes, and some brilliant (I think the word is 'incisive') dialogue to go with them. Of course personally, with my dark philosophy, I mostly related to Dodge's cynicism, but one can easily see why this might be a favorite for actors-- every character has great moments. Gary Sinise apparently directed a revival and it's no surprise that he was drawn to it. Instant classic.
December 31, 2015
Sam Shepard will have to slug it out with Lanford Wilson for Best American Playwright of the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Whatever the outcome Shepard is in contention for his startling ability to delineate the various degrees of obscene psychic cruelty that family members are capable of inflicting on one another, and to put this on the stage in a way that's not only palpable, but riveting, and even comic -- without ever diminishing our comprehension of the horrors being perpetrated.
I have no idea if Shepard's plays meet the definition of "tragedy" (and Thank God I don't have to take a position on that). But one thing I know is that when I see, read, or hear one of his plays I come away with a severe case of almost giddy Catharsis -- which is, I suppose, what brings me back to him again and again.
Whatever the outcome Shepard is in contention for his startling ability to delineate the various degrees of obscene psychic cruelty that family members are capable of inflicting on one another, and to put this on the stage in a way that's not only palpable, but riveting, and even comic -- without ever diminishing our comprehension of the horrors being perpetrated.
I have no idea if Shepard's plays meet the definition of "tragedy" (and Thank God I don't have to take a position on that). But one thing I know is that when I see, read, or hear one of his plays I come away with a severe case of almost giddy Catharsis -- which is, I suppose, what brings me back to him again and again.
July 26, 2008
I have to say- this play is MESSED up. This play shows the destruction of a family from the inside out, and I was relieved when I finished it, not because it was bad, but because I couldn't wait to get out of these characters' minds.
April 20, 2015
.موضوع نمایشنامه راجع به زندگی آمریکایی و یک خانواده از هم پاشیده س
و نویسنده خیلی خوب فضای این خانواده و مشکلاتشون و سردرگمی شخصیت ها رو ترسیم کرده
و نویسنده خیلی خوب فضای این خانواده و مشکلاتشون و سردرگمی شخصیت ها رو ترسیم کرده
August 29, 2016
Sam Shepard's play dresses itself as naturalistic but wears those clothes loosely, sometimes not at all. This makes it difficult at times to fully engage with the undoubtedly powerful action. It's true of almost any play, or work of art, that what happens works on more than one level but for me, here, it is distracting.
The myth making being challenged is true and real while the reality the characters are working through is also painful. However instances where they act like symbolic characters rather than humans undercuts all the work done to define them while the need to ground them in naturalistic soil pins the wings of the absurd.
It's a thin line and more personal than anything, this wavering balance of emotional and intellectual engagement. When it works it works so well but when it doesn't, there is an uncanny valley effect that is distancing.
The myth making being challenged is true and real while the reality the characters are working through is also painful. However instances where they act like symbolic characters rather than humans undercuts all the work done to define them while the need to ground them in naturalistic soil pins the wings of the absurd.
It's a thin line and more personal than anything, this wavering balance of emotional and intellectual engagement. When it works it works so well but when it doesn't, there is an uncanny valley effect that is distancing.
August 24, 2012
I have read this play about seven or eight times. I used this play for my final script analysis project in college and kept finding more and more bizarre qualities hidden in the text each time I read it. I am a huge fan of dark plays with twisted characters.
December 3, 2013
Painfully beautiful, beautifully realistic, realistically awkward, Shepard writes regular American family life like it's a surrealistic painting. With classic symbolism, this dysfunctional family passes from one generation to the next in a few strange moments.
July 13, 2024
True, I'm only 2/3 of the way through, but this is one of the most ridiculous plays I have ever read. Y'see, drama is about people, and I don't care how vibrantly aggressive Shepard's writing is, and his dialogue is great, but none of his characters are even vaguely real. These people - fathers, sons, grandsons - don't even recognise each other. It's nonsense. The whole play depends on the utterly absurd notions that none of these people know who each other are and aren't even bothered about the fact that one character says he's the grandson of another, isn't recognised, and yet carries on as if this isn't a big deal.
"Hi Grandpa, I haven't seen you in six years."
"Who are you?"
"I'm your son's son. I stopped off before driving 5,000 miles to see him."
[At this point, you'd expect Grandpa to mention that his son is right here, but oh no].
"Really? Is he my son? I can't remember."
You'd think it's a play about dementia and memory loss, but really it isn't. It's just a hopeless attempt to ape Arthur Miller without ever getting close to understanding the human condition. And there's the added effect that Shepard really hates actors. Dodge gets his hair shaved at the end of Act 1, just to make staging difficult. Bradley has a wooden leg, just to make casting difficult. You can almost see Shepard sitting at his typewriter and grinning to himself at how unstageable his play is.
It's ludicrous. I can't believe this nonsense won a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe it's a staging post on the way to freeing drama from its classical chains, but we've gone past that. Buried Child is a failed, out-dated experiment.
"Hi Grandpa, I haven't seen you in six years."
"Who are you?"
"I'm your son's son. I stopped off before driving 5,000 miles to see him."
[At this point, you'd expect Grandpa to mention that his son is right here, but oh no].
"Really? Is he my son? I can't remember."
You'd think it's a play about dementia and memory loss, but really it isn't. It's just a hopeless attempt to ape Arthur Miller without ever getting close to understanding the human condition. And there's the added effect that Shepard really hates actors. Dodge gets his hair shaved at the end of Act 1, just to make staging difficult. Bradley has a wooden leg, just to make casting difficult. You can almost see Shepard sitting at his typewriter and grinning to himself at how unstageable his play is.
It's ludicrous. I can't believe this nonsense won a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe it's a staging post on the way to freeing drama from its classical chains, but we've gone past that. Buried Child is a failed, out-dated experiment.
January 11, 2012
Didn't really like it. It started just fine but then deconstructed into an absurdist mess which I don't care that much about, not in Beckett and evidently not in Shepard either. Buried Child is more about the form than about what it's trying to say - although I'm not sure if it tries to say nothing at all.
That's the problem with expressionism and absurdism: the art piece in itself is the center of everything and in Buried Child's case, the mystery and illogicality of it all takes the attension of an audience or a reader and the characters and the theme of the play - or an art piece - goes without notice. These kinds of plays makes me feel like it is all about the play, the art when I feel it most certainly should not be. If you have something to say, why not just say it without shrouding it into a metafor? Because the audience can't connect with it when they are constantly trying to find out what it is about - and that should be clear right after exposition.
I have nothing against heavy subjects but they better make some sense.
That's the problem with expressionism and absurdism: the art piece in itself is the center of everything and in Buried Child's case, the mystery and illogicality of it all takes the attension of an audience or a reader and the characters and the theme of the play - or an art piece - goes without notice. These kinds of plays makes me feel like it is all about the play, the art when I feel it most certainly should not be. If you have something to say, why not just say it without shrouding it into a metafor? Because the audience can't connect with it when they are constantly trying to find out what it is about - and that should be clear right after exposition.
I have nothing against heavy subjects but they better make some sense.
March 30, 2016
This play will haunt you.
This play will excite you.
This play will change you.
This play will excite you.
This play will change you.
May 1, 2025
i just love those plays where every single character goes bonkers
reread for a class, still great
reread for a class, still great
October 20, 2019
Y acá tenemos otra obra sobre la crueldad y la decadencia del Sueño Americano. En este caso, en su versión rural. Niño enterrado ocurre en una granja de Illinois, donde vive una familia a la que sería amable calificar como disfuncional. La acción es intensa, absurda, por momentos sencillamente perturbadora. No por nada inspiró el único capítulo en toda la historia de X-Files que fue prohibido para menores de 18 años.
[De esta obra vi la puesta dirigida por Scott Elliott y protagonizada por Ed Harris y Amy Mardigan, en 2016.]
[De esta obra vi la puesta dirigida por Scott Elliott y protagonizada por Ed Harris y Amy Mardigan, en 2016.]
January 9, 2023
I have so many notes about this book, mainly just how chaotic the entire thing was. Either way- love it
November 25, 2023
we see how unsettled every single character is. no one is ok except maybe the fact of the release of the secret held for so long. resentment festers in every single interaction.
Read
February 1, 2023I’m still pissed I had to read this.
Though, there was some levity, like why?
Though, there was some levity, like why?
August 9, 2021
Such ugly beauty
Such subtle confusion
Such damage
Such sadness
Such unreliability
Such a field of corn
and carrot
and baby
Such beautiful ugliness
Such tremors of possibility
Such pain
Such betrayal
Such existence
and non-existence
and debt
Such terror
Such loss
Such flooding
Such twisted remembrance
Such a reflection of us
and you
and me
Such subtle confusion
Such damage
Such sadness
Such unreliability
Such a field of corn
and carrot
and baby
Such beautiful ugliness
Such tremors of possibility
Such pain
Such betrayal
Such existence
and non-existence
and debt
Such terror
Such loss
Such flooding
Such twisted remembrance
Such a reflection of us
and you
and me
July 19, 2014
پرده ی اخر رو به علت هیجانی که توش داشت بیشتر پسندیدم و پرده ی اول به نظرم خیلی حالت معرفی شخصیت و این ها داشت و فقط آخرش اون بحران مورد نظر رو ایجاد می کنه بنابراین صفحات اولیه اش به نظرم اضافه بود چون می تونست این ویژگی شخصیت ها رو بعدا هم بیان کنه.
January 2, 2016
This is some scary, crazy, awesome sh*t.
January 11, 2015
Strange strange strange. But I liked it.
June 19, 2017
Dark, dated, but probably fun for actors to act in.
July 10, 2020
A forceful, and rather depressing, play about the disintegration of a family in 1970s American farmland...one of Sam Shepard's best.
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