The 1996 production of Buried Child perfectly captures Shepard’s play by highlighting the cacophony and disengagement within this family through the actors’ perfect use of tone and volume. The performance begins with an interaction between Dodge and his wife Halie. In the written play, Halie is nagging Dodge to take “a pill” for his cough, all the while forcing him to converse with her thus aggravating his cough and increasing his irritation. You can see how disagreeable they are to each other based on the language, he uses simple, sometimes passive aggressive statements to respond to her much longer statements. She conveys her frustration towards him by being insulting for example when he answers that the rain looks like rain she is appalled and asks if he is having a seizure thus making a rude comment on his cognitive abilities. Through diction, we are able to understand their distaste for each other because it’s written in front of us. However, when something is spoken aloud tone and volume can account for the majority of the meaning we take away from certain statements. Luckily the anger between these characters is perfectly highlighted by the way the actors shouted gratingly at each other, especially when Dodge would cough violently.They facilitated an environment of discord, which is prevalent throughout the entire play, through their delivery of their lines. Tilden’s actor, for example, averted eye contact with his father and spoke with a low timid voice, even while trying to explain his experience in New Mexico which expresses a desire for closeness, for someone in their family to give him understanding but also cannot seem to connect to the people around them. This was also made clear where dodge was asking Tilden and even Shelly almost desperately to stay with him. To not “abandon” him. This was all expressed through an increasingly pleading tone which contrasted the usual tone of anger typically used amongst the characters. The contrast between polarizing anger and a very human need for closeness that is conveyed by their tones contributes to the theme of dissonance.
There is also a preoccupation with the past that is evident within the written play and costume choices in the live version. For example, in the very beginning, Halie fondly remembers a horse race she attended with a breeder. She repeats the word “Wonderful” in relation to the breeder-man, the race itself, winning money and describes the entire event as “dancing with life.” This implies a past that is much more vivacious than her present life thus indicating a fascination for the past. The 1996 production really allows us to this idea of wanting things to be as they were when Halie returns from “lunch” with Father Dewis with red hair when she originally had white hair. This shows that she does what she can to bring herself back to her youth, back before she was married and the issues relating incest and infanticide plagued her life. She willfully deludes herself. Because this costume choice is so striking and odd, it is representative of the delusional and ridiculous nature of the family’s belief that they can go back to a time before their crimes were committed.
