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Buried Child

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Sam Shepard was renowned as one of America’s most accomplished playwrights well before he gained celebrity as a film star. No native dramatist since O’Neill has probed so deeply the core of American pop mythology and set it on a collision course with the realities of American life. Buried Child explores the inner tensions of a rural existence, father-son relationships, and the place women hold in an increasingly ambiguous domestic atmosphere. Starkly poetic, humorous, and mysterious, Buried Child is a vision of a dysfunctional family transformed into a symbol of America’s loss of innocence. The work earned its author a Pulitzer Prize in 1979.

Credits

Creative team

By

Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard's When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), co-written with Joseph Chaikin, appeared in last season's American Repertory Theater New Stages series, and will appear on tour at the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia March 28-31 and in Singapore June 9-11. Mr. Shepard won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child.  He and is also the author of the Obie-award-winning plays Chicago, Icarus Mother, Red Cross, Forsenic and the Navigators, Melodrama Play, The Tooth of Crime, Action, Curse of the Starving Class, and Fool for Love, A Lie of the Mind (New York Drama Critics Circle Award), and the recent States of Shock, which premiered at the New York Shakespeare Festival and moved to the Royal Court theatre in London. Mr. Shepard wrote the screenplays for Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, Altman's Fool for Love, and Wender's Paris, Texas. As an actor, he appeared in Days of Heaven, Resurrection, Raggedy Man, The Right Stuff, Frances, Country, and Fool for Love. In 1986, Mr. Shepard was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, where in 1992, he was awarded its Gold Medal for Drama.

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Directed by

Marcus Stern

In the Body of the World

Directed by

Marcus Stern

Associate Director of the American Repertory Theater and the A.R.T./ MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training, and Head Of Directing for Theater, Dance and Media at Harvard University.  His directorial work with the A.R.T. has included The Onion Cellar with The Dresden Dolls, Donnie Darko (adaptor/director/sound designer), Beckett’s Endgame, Adam Rapp's Nocturne, Suzan Lori Parks' The America Play, Adrienne Kennedy's The Ohio State Murders, Büchner's Woyzeck, Sam Shepard's Buried Child, and Christopher Durang’s Marriage of Bette and Boo (also at NYU and Harvard University). A.R.T. Institute: A Bright New Boise, The Flu Season, The 4th Graders Present An Unnamed Love-Suicide, Beckett Shorts: (Not I, Footfalls, Play, Rough For Radio II, Breath, Come and Go), Donnie Darko. Other: Hang Ong's The Chang Fragments and Martin Crimp's The Treatment at The Joseph Papp Public Theater; Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits at Theater Neumarkt in Zurich; Jose Rivera's Marisol at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival; Mac Wellman's Hyacinth Macaw at Primary Stages in New York; Instant Girl's On the Run at Dance Theater Workshop; Mac Wellman's The Land of Fog and Whistles at the Whitney Museum Biennial; Neena Beber's The Living Goddess at The Magic Theater; Erin Cressida Wilson's Cross Dressing in the Depression at Soho Rep; and Quincy Long's Whole Hearted at the Mark Taper Forum's Taper Too in Los Angeles. His adaptations include Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (Zurich), Phoebe's Got Three Sisters (Cucaracha Theater in New York) and O'Neill's The Great God Brown at NYU and Harvard University.  He's currently working with ArtsEmerson on his adaptation of Don Delillo's short story, "Hammer & Sickle" for the stage. Mr. Stern has taught at the Yale School of Drama, New York University, and Columbia University. He currently teaches at Harvard University, Harvard's Extension School, and A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training.

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Set design by

Allison Koturbash

Set design by

Allison Koturbash

Allison Koturbash, the set designer for Woyzeck, previously created the sets for the American Repertory Theater productions of Buried Child, The Accident, Demons, and The America Play. Her work includes Juliet of the Spirits at Theater Neumarkt, Zurich; Life Is a Dream at the Los Angeles Theatre Center; Largo Desolato at the Yale Repertory Theatre; Phoebe Got Three Sisters at La Cucaracha Theater; Hamletmachine at the Yale School of Drama; Rough for Radio II and Catastrophe at Home for Contemporary Theatre.

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Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting design by

John Ambrosone

Lighting Designer John Ambrosone has designed over thirty productions for the American Repertory Theater, including Lysistrata, Absolution, Marat/Sade, Othello, Animals and Plants, Mother Courage (2001 Elliot Norton Design Award), The Doctor's Dilemma, Three Farces and a Funeral, Nocturne, IvanovThe Cripple of Inishmaan, The King Stag, Boston Marriage, Charlie in the House of Rue, Valparaiso, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, How I Learned to Drive, Nobody Dies on Friday, Man and Superman, The Old Neighborhood, When the World Was Green (A Chef's Fable), Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, and Buried Child. On Broadway he designed The Old Neighborhood. Work in resident theaters includes the Alley Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, the Coconut Grove Playhouse, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Walnut Street Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, and Arena Stage. Mr. Ambrosone also has designed in Singapore, Moscow, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, Germany, and France.

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In the Body of the World

Sound design by

Marcus Stern

Associate Director of the American Repertory Theater and the A.R.T./ MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training, and Head Of Directing for Theater, Dance and Media at Harvard University.  His directorial work with the A.R.T. has included The Onion Cellar with The Dresden Dolls, Donnie Darko (adaptor/director/sound designer), Beckett’s Endgame, Adam Rapp's Nocturne, Suzan Lori Parks' The America Play, Adrienne Kennedy's The Ohio State Murders, Büchner's Woyzeck, Sam Shepard's Buried Child, and Christopher Durang’s Marriage of Bette and Boo (also at NYU and Harvard University). A.R.T. Institute: A Bright New Boise, The Flu Season, The 4th Graders Present An Unnamed Love-Suicide, Beckett Shorts: (Not I, Footfalls, Play, Rough For Radio II, Breath, Come and Go), Donnie Darko. Other: Hang Ong's The Chang Fragments and Martin Crimp's The Treatment at The Joseph Papp Public Theater; Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits at Theater Neumarkt in Zurich; Jose Rivera's Marisol at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Humana Festival; Mac Wellman's Hyacinth Macaw at Primary Stages in New York; Instant Girl's On the Run at Dance Theater Workshop; Mac Wellman's The Land of Fog and Whistles at the Whitney Museum Biennial; Neena Beber's The Living Goddess at The Magic Theater; Erin Cressida Wilson's Cross Dressing in the Depression at Soho Rep; and Quincy Long's Whole Hearted at the Mark Taper Forum's Taper Too in Los Angeles. His adaptations include Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits (Zurich), Phoebe's Got Three Sisters (Cucaracha Theater in New York) and O'Neill's The Great God Brown at NYU and Harvard University.  He's currently working with ArtsEmerson on his adaptation of Don Delillo's short story, "Hammer & Sickle" for the stage. Mr. Stern has taught at the Yale School of Drama, New York University, and Columbia University. He currently teaches at Harvard University, Harvard's Extension School, and A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training.

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Sound design by

Christopher Walker

Christopher Walker has composed music and designed sound for We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, Phaedra, Beckett Trio: Eh Joe, Ghost Trio, and Nacht und Traüme, and An Evening of Beckett, and designed sound for The King Stag, Loot, The Idiots Karamazov, Ivanov, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Charlie in the House of Rue, The Merchant of Venice, Valparaiso, The Taming of the Shrew, The Bacchae, The Wild Duck, Woyzeck, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Wild Duck, Alice in Bed, Slaughter City, Buried Child, Ubu Rock, The Threepenny Opera, The Accident, Demons, Waiting for Godot, The Oresteia, Hot 'n' Throbbing, The America Play, A Touch of the Poet, The Cherry Orchard, What the Butler Saw, and Those the River Keeps at the A.R.T. Previously he composed music and designed sound for productions at the Intiman Theatre, the Bathhouse Theatre, and the Alice B. Theatre. He also scores for dance and has composed for the Allegro Dance Festival, the Bumbershoot Festival, and On The Boards.

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Dodge Jeremy Geidt
Halie Georgine Hall
Tilden Jack Willis
Bradley Charles Levin
Father Dewis Remo Airialdi
Vince Benjamin Evett
Shelly Phoebe Jonas