Bury The Dead

Directors Notes

The year is 2015, the second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow. As a play, Bury The Dead emerges as a social-realist stage poem that goes straight to the heart of the glaring question, “is war worth the sacrifice it demands on those it calls to arms?” This is the question that every generation seeks to answer in war or peace. This is the stark reality that we now face as a nation as the body count continues to grow and the tears of our loved ones continue to flow mixed with the blood of our youth.

When the Group Theatre premiered it on Broadway in 1936, Irwin Shaw’s Bury The Dead must have already seemed timeless. Now set amid a generic mid-eastern conflict the play presents, in bracingly plain-spoken terms, an iconic conceit and mines it more for human drama than political significance. Six dead American soldiers stand up in protest and refuse to be buried. Although this play is bluntly antiwar, the most compelling themes of Bury The Dead pit the existential dilemmas (class, mortality, social responsibility) against the backdrop of family that transcends life during wartime. The horrors of war must cease if humankind is to survive. We must all do something! Let your voice be heard today to stop the war from beginning tomorrow. Peace.

Buddy Butler
Director-2010