Cartoonists at the Theater 4- The Buried Child

The Buried Child. Directed by Prof. Rosa Joshi, the play features students Samuel Asher ('15), Meme Garcia-Cosgrove ('14) Jacob Swanson ('15) Matthew Weingarten ('14), Lucas Kiehn-Thillman ('14), Emma Bjornson ('16), and Marshall Lewis ('14).

Hey! I got to see a play on Tuesday and do a bit of sketching in the dark. The performances were all great and everything was very professionally done. What I've been struggling with since seeing it is the tone of the play. The title (Hey, dead baby! Not a spoiler if it's in the title!), the music, the set, everything suggested to me that this was supposed to be a backwoods horror play. And in a lot of ways it fits the genre- isolated rural family, unexpected city visitors, suggestions of inbreeding. The whole thing felt very creepy, I kept expecting a hand or something to pop up from beneath the floorboards.

But from what I've heard and read since the performance, the play isn't supposed to be frightening but sad, about the death of the American family/American dream. I guess those things are scary, too.

 

"Tilden was right about the corn you know. I’ve never seen such corn."

"Open up wider."

"His face became his father’s face. Same bones. Same eyes. Same nose. Same breath. And his father’s face changed to his grandfather’s face."

"You sit here all day and night, festering away! Decomposing! Smelling up the house with your putrid body! Hacking your head off ‘til all hours of the morning! Thinking up mean, evil, stupid things to say about your own flesh and blood!"

"There’s nothing to be afraid of. These are all good people. All righteous souls."

The Buried Child runs from February 21 – March 3 at the Lee Center for the Arts. Tickets are $6 for students, $8 for SU faculty and staff, and $10 general admission. Go check it out!