'Buried Child' by Iron Age: Shepard's own American Gothic
In both theme and setting, Sam Shepard's 1978 Buried Child has aged far beyond its shelf life. In the 1970s, the breakdown of the nuclear family illustrated by this play was just beginning; today, you can't walk a block without passing a survivor of a broken home. The end of the American dream of owning a piece of land, which Shepard depicts in the barren fields of a rundown farm, seems remote compared to the painfu…