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Sam Shepard's Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child takes place in an old farm house, somewhere in Illinois. We are introduced to Dodge, a cranky, sarcastic alcoholic on his death bed, and his chatty, oblivious wife Halie, who is having an affair with the local Protestant minister. As Dodge's health devolves, the prodigal sons return: Tilden, who has come back into town after having run into some trouble in New Mexico, and Bradley, who seems to live nearby and only has one leg, having lost his other one in a chainsaw accident. Their lives are a whirlwind of chaos and confusion: Dodge sneaks whiskey even as he coughs, unstable Tilden claims to have discovered vegetables in the yard that Dodge swears don't exist, and Bradley enters the house and cuts his father's hair while he is asleep. It is not quite clear why everyone is acting so strangely until Tilden's other son, Vince, comes home, after six years of absence, with his girlfriend Shelly in tow. As old secrets from the past rise to the surface, we see newcomer Shelly try to fit the pieces together. As the family tries desperately to keep the past in the past and stay afloat, the darkest of secrets begin to come to light. Alternately funny and darkly macabre.

Here are eight of Pulitzer prizewinning Sam Shepard's most stunning plays. This brilliant American dramatist creates what the New Yorker dubbed "Shepard Country" - a landscape of the imagination, a unique theatrical experience that captures our culture and consciousness, our fears and fantasies.

Scottie Templeton's a charming, irresponsible fellow. A sometime Broadway press agent and former scriptwriter, he's everyone's friend, nobody's hero and a great womanizer who's managed to live over fifty years without taking anything seriously including love, marriage and fatherhood. Life's been one continuous gag. But at fifty one, he finds the script's been rewritten as a tragedy: he is fatally ill. His son Jud, alienated by years of neglect, comes to visit. Scottie's one concern is to make friends with his son, for everyone else adores Scottie including his ex wife, his friend and boss, and his doctor, and after a bitter, revealing confrontation, father and son are reconciled. And it is Jud who gets Scottie to agree to be rehospitalized for treatment and then organizes a giant tribute to his father in a theatre.