2005-2006 Landscape and the Family

Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O'Neill October 17, 2005

Buried Child by Sam Shepard February 20, 2006

The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder May 8, 2006

The Readings

Desire Under the Elms

by Eugene O'Neill October 17, 2005

“Desire Under the Elms” takes place on a hardscrabble farm in 1850 New England. Ephraim Cabot loves working his rocky soil, and he’s worked two wives into the grave doing it. His three sons are growing restless.

Buried Child

by Sam Shepard February 20, 2006

Set on a ruined farm somewhere in Illinois, Dodge, the patriarch of a fractured family, is camped on the couch, staring at the television, reminiscing about baseball, and sneaking sips of whiskey. Halie, his wife, appears, literally as a voice from above, chanting the litany of dreams gone sour. One son, the apple of their eye, the athlete, the hero, is long dead; another, Tilden, has been reduced to a sort of Boo Radley, wandering in from the field with an inexplicable harvest; Bradley, wooden-legged and menacing, preys on his sickly father. As night comes on, an unexpected guest, Tilden’s son Vince, will appear on the doorstep with his girlfriend Shelly, dropping in on their way out West. On this particular rain drenched day, the past will struggle to make its presence known in startling ways.

The Skin of Our Teeth

by Thornton Wilder May 8, 2006

Ricocheting between the dark and the absurd, Wilder tells us to stay alert and consider the disasters we’ve come through, and the ones we’ve yet to face. The world may be crumbling around us, but we can cling to the great examples of wisdom and strength in our history and our literature. Mr. Antrobus says at the end of the play: “I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be sought for—whether it’s a field, or a home, or a country;” our world is worth fighting for, because of the all the great and good things in it.