Buried Child - Performance History

Performance History

Buried Child premiered at The Magic Theater in San Francisco on 27 June 1978, directed by Robert Woodruff. Its New York premiere was at Theater for the New City in New York City on October 19, 1978. Theatre critic Harold Clurman wrote, in The Nation, "What strikes the ear and eye is comic, occasionally hilarious behavior and speech at which one laughs while remaining slightly puzzled and dismayed (if not resentful), and perhaps indefinably saddened. Yet there is a swing to it all, a vagrant freedom, a tattered song." It transferred to Theatre de Lys, now the Lucille Lortel Theatre, where it became the first Off-Broadway play to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1979.

The show was revived for a two-month run on Broadway in 1996 following a production at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in 1995. The production, directed by Gary Sinise at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, was nominated for five Tony Awards but did not win any. The script for the production had been reworked by Shepard, allegedly fixing edits that a previous director had made to the text without Shepard's authorization. Shepard writes that he had felt certain "aspects of the writing still seemed awkward and unfinished" in 1978 and that he was glad for the opportunity to revisit the script for the Steppenwolf production.

Magic Theatre Cast

• Dodge - Joseph Gistirak
• Halie - Catherine Willis
• Tilden - Dennis Ludlow
• Bradley - William M. Carr
• Shelly - Betsy Scott
• Vince - Barry Lane
• Father Dewis - RJ Frank

New York Premiere Cast

• Dodge - Richard Hamilton
• Halie - Jacqueline Brookes
• Tilden - Tom Noonan
• Bradley - Jay O. Sanders
• Shelly - Mary McDonnell
• Vince - Christopher McCann
• Father Dewis - Bill Wiley