Buried Child

October 22 & 23 2025

Buried Child is a play that explores the inner tensions of a rural existence, father-son relationships, and the place women hold in an ambiguous domestic atmosphere. The play depicts a Middle-American agricultural family that is less-than prosperous. The family has a dark, terrible secret: Years ago, Tilden, the eldest of three sons belonging to Dodge and Halie, committed an act of incest with his mother. She bore his child, a baby boy, which Dodge drowned and buried in the field behind their farmhouse. The act destroyed the family. The play depicts the fragmentation of the American nuclear family in a context of disappointment and disillusionment with American mythology and the American Dream.

By Sam Shepard