Drama won Pulitzer

Sam Shepard’s autopsy of the family opens this weekend in a searing evisceration of the American Dream.

“Buried Child” won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and launched the playwright into national fame. Ironweed Productions is presenting this fragmentation of the nuclear family in all its mythology and shadows starting this weekend at the Santa Fe Playhouse. Directed by Mona Malec, the play stars Larry Glaister, Kat Sawyer, Quinn Mander, Scott Harrison, Matt Sanford, Kate Kita and Elias Gallegos.

The battles of denial, blame, accusations and heartbreak ricochet when a forgotten grandchild appears at an Illinois farmhouse. Vince wants to introduce the family to his new girlfriend Shelly, who longs for a Norman Rockwell portrait beneath the peeling paint and faded curtains. Instead, their arrival propels everyone on a wild carnival ride into a haunted world of secrets and lies.

	If you go WHAT: “Buried Child” by Sam Shepard WHO: Ironweed Productions WHEN: Gala opening 7:30 p.m. today. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays. Through April 14. WHERE: Santa Fe Playhouse, 142 E. DeVargas St. COST: Gala opening $25; regular $20/general; $15/seniors, students, teachers and military; $10 Thursdays. CONTACT: 988-4262 or www.santafeplayhouse.org

Director Mona Malec has wanted to direct the play for years.

“There’s just something to me about the family dynamic and recycling history on the family,” she said. “There’s no real sense of reality. Everybody makes up a new story in order to survive. That resonates with me.”

Dodge, his wife Halie and their two sons Tilden and Bradley live isolated lives clinging desperately to their own illusions of a fractured past.

Ironweed artistic director Scott Harrison plays Tilden, who had been mysteriously kicked out of New Mexico and returned to the Midwest.

“He’s just come back after living in New Mexico for about 20 years,” Harrison said. “He got into some trouble in New Mexico, which isn’t ever really spelled out.”

There are references to his living in a Bernalillo trailer.

“Which is where Sam Shepard’s dad lived for a while,” Harrison explained. “Tilden is dealing with some of those issues of being drawn to the sense of independence and the majesty and the beauty of the West. It talks about how he spent some time in jail. He’s been living on the fringe, more alone than he’s ever been. He’s suffered some devastating losses that are mysterious and secret in the beginning. He’s kind of lost his sense of who he is.”

Halie alternately rants, drinks and leaves the family to revel in the past with a sympathetic Protestant minister.

Family patriarch Dodge, now in his late ‘60s, is trying to come to terms with the failure of the family farm as he steeps himself in depression and alcohol.

“He’s trying to figure out what happened to his life and to establish what’s important and what isn’t important,” said Glaister, who portrays Dodge. “That’s the crux of the play.”

All the family relationships are strained to the breaking point.

“We battle through the denial and the accusations and the heartbreak like we never have before,” said Glaister, a graduate of New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. “It’s a huge role and the most complex role I’ve ever played, ever. It’s an emotional roller coaster.”

“It’s sometimes really funny, though,” Malec added. “That kind of dynamic — when these moments happen and somebody says, ‘That’s not true’ — it creates a funny level of tension. I don’t see it as sad and depressing at all.”

The violently dysfunctional family’s secrets eventually erupt. Years ago, Dodge buried an unwanted newborn somewhere in the back yard.

From that point on, the entire family lived under a cloud of guilt — until Shelly forces the issue.

“I think seeing our truth is literally digging it up out of the yard,” Malec said. “To me, there is a sense of freedom. One of the characters literally digs it up. In my mind, he’s free in that moment.

“It’s like all dysfunctional families,” she continued. “No one talks about what really happened. If they did, they’d be healthy.”

Malec says she prefers allowing the actors to discover their characters, rather than imposing her own point of view on the cast.

“I guess you could look at every script as a daunting script,” she said. “Even with the most broad farce, you need talented actors to pull that off. You need people who respect risk-taking. That’s very hard to find, and I think they do that.”

Audiences will be alternately empathetic, horrified and heartbroken, Glaister added.

“They’ll be walking out of there saying, ‘There but for the grace of God’,” he said.

“If you’ve got skeletons, you’ll be thinking about them when you see this play.”