![]()
SAM SHEPARD
Buried Child
Sam Shepard is the author of more than forty-five plays. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child. He was a finalist for the W. H. Smith Literary Award for his story collection Great Dream of Heaven, and he has also written the story collection Cruising Paradise, two collections of prose pieces, Motel Chronicles and Hawk Moon, and Rolling Thunder Logbook, a diary of Bob Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Review tour. As an actor he has appeared in more than thirty films, including Days of Heaven, Crimes of the Heart, Steel Magnolias, The Pelican Brief, Snow Falling on Cedars, All the Pretty Horses, Black Hawk Down, and The Notebook. He received an Oscar nomination in 1984 for his performance in The Right Stuff. His screenplay for Paris, Texas won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, and he wrote and directed the film Far North in 1988 and cowrote and starred in Wim Wenders’ Don't Come Knocking in 2005. Shepard's plays, eleven of which have won Obie Awards, include The God of Hell, The Late Henry Moss, Simpático, Curse of the Starving Class, True West, Fool for Love, and A Lie of the Mind, which won a New York Drama Desk Award. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Shepard received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy in 1992, and in 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. He lives in New York.
ALSO BY SAM SHEPARD
Tooth of Crime (Second Dance)
The God of Hell
Great Dream of Heaven
The Late Henry Moss, Eyes for Consuela,
When the World Was Green
Cruising Paradise
Simpático
States of Shock, Far North, Silent Tongue
A Lie of the Mind
The Unseen Hand and Other Plays
Fool for Love and Other Plays
Paris, Texas
Seven Plays
Motel Chronicles
Rolling Thunder Logbook
Hawk Moon
![]()
For Joe Chaikin
PREFACE TO THE
REVISED EDITION
In 1978, when we first produced Buried Child at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, I had an uneasy feeling about it. Although I was more than satisfied with the production, the actors, the set, etc. , aspects of the writing still seemed awkward and unfinished.
The Pulitzer Prize did not change my opinion in this regard, but by that time I was already on to other work and had no inclination to double back. When Gary Sinise started work on the Steppenwolf production in Chicago in 1995, enough time had elapsed for me to clearly see the holes in the play. This insight was also heightened by Gary's instinct to push the characters and situation into an almost burlesque territory, which seemed suddenly right. It became clear, for instance, that Halie's offstage voice in the opening scene went on too long and that Lois Smith (playing the part) was bringing a sharp irony and wit to it that deserved special attention. The sexual innuendos between Dodge (James Gammon) and Shelly (Kellie Overbey) needed to be more overt and less coy. But, most important, the character of Vince seemed to be hanging in the wind, without real purpose. Even though a core truth of this character is his aimlessness and passivity, there seemed to be no point in allowing him to be completely outside the play almost in the predicament of a narrator. So I began to try to find ways to bring him around, to “see the light,” as it were, without turning him into some kind of hero or even Sherlock Holmes. Finally, the language began to settle in and take hold. There were fewer gaps between the actors, the characters, and the words. I'm very grateful for having had the opportunity to do this work. It's now a better play.
