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Department of Fine
Arts
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Francis Marion University Theatre's first mainstage production of the
2009-2010 season
will Buried Child, the Pulitzer Prize
winning drama which launched Sam Shepard's career as a significant
playwright. THE STORY: The setting is a squalid farm home occupied by a family filled with suppressed violence and an unease born of deep-seated unhappiness. The characters are a ranting alcoholic grandfather; a sanctimonious grandmother who goes on drinking bouts with the local minister; and their sons, Tilden, an All-American footballer now a hulking semi-idiot; and Bradley, who has lost one leg to a chain saw. Into their midst comes Vince, a grandson none of them recognizes or remembers, and his girlfriend, Shelly, who cannot comprehend the madness to which she is suddenly introduced. The family harbors a dark secret—years earlier the grandfather, Dodge, had buried an unwanted newborn baby in an undisclosed spot, creating a cloud of guilt which is dispelled only when Tilden unearths the child's mummified remains and carries it upstairs to his mother. His act purges the family, at last, of its infamy and suggests the perhaps slim possibility of a new beginning under Vince, whose estrangement from the others has spared him the taint of their sin. THE REVIEWS: Winner of the 1979 Pulitzer Prize. Revised for the 1996 Broadway production. This powerful and brilliant play probes deep into the disintegration of the American Dream. "Shepard is one of the most prolific of our playwrights, and, for that matter, certainly one of the most brilliant." —NY Post. "Mr. Shepard is an uncommon playwright and uncommonly gifted…" —NY Times. "…wildly poetic, full of stage images and utterances replete with insidious suggestiveness…" —NY Magazine. |
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AUDITIONS for the cast of 5 men and
2 women will be held in the Fine Arts Theatre on September 9 from 3 to
5 pm and again on September 10 from 4 to 6 pm. RESERVATIONS for Buried Child may be made beginning October 19 by calling the box office at 661-1365. The box office will be open to reserve seats Monday through Friday from 1 pm to 5 pm. All tickets are free to the public. Curtain is at 7:30. The Francis Marion University Theatre's 2008-2009 season's winter production, under the direction of Keith Best, will be Eleemosynary by Lee Blessing, to be performed February 18-20, 2010. The season will conclude April 15-27, 2010, with the production of Greater Tuna by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard, directed by Glen Gourley. For additional information contact Mr. Gourley in FAC 224, 661-1538, agourley@fmarion.edu. Interested in working "behind the scenes"? Contact Mr. Granath in FAC 222, 661-1536, dgranath@fmarion.edu. |
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