American Drama and the Postmodern: Fragmenting the Realistic Sta ...

and the rise of feminism, the U.S. came to a recognition from which it has not recovered: there is no fixed position from which to view reality. As a consequence, deep and abiding conflicts of points of view cannot be easily bridged. The result is that categories that were once discrete are now all “bunched up together.” And structurally, Bullins makes that point with the soliloquies that step outside of time, giving each character a chance to look back over time—so that the characters tell us their futures, reconstruct their pasts, and subvert the context in which one is to judge them. In the same way the ending of the play subverts the beginning, forcing on the audience the experience of the time, of dual views of reality, of seeing race as an impediment to Monty and Janie’s relationship, which can only be overcome by playing with the idea of “rape,” or as a social construct beyond which they move to get to a deeper relationship. Rather than choosing a side, the playwright forces the audience to decide, at the same time to recognize that one’s choices are not the playwright’s. It is therefore the audience’s view of race and sex that is ultimately the subject of the play, not that of the characters or the playwright.

Sam Shepard similarly creates problems for the audience by combining both Weller’s and Bullins’ techniques in Buried Child (1979). More indeterminate than Moonchildren, there are continual references to a field of corn behind the farmhouse, but Halie denies that there is anything growing back there; Dodge does too. Yet Tilden enters with arms full of corn, and later with other vegetables, leaving it to the audience to decide what is real and what is imagined, or symbolic. Similarly, brain-damaged Tilden contends against Dodge and Halie’s denials that a child is buried in those fields, and finally, at the very end of the play, enters with “the corpse of the child.” This seems to be a time-bending technique like that used by Ed Bullins: different times are overlapping simultaneously at the end of the play.

In the conclusion, Father Dewis tells Vince to see to his Grandmother Halie upstairs, but Vince says, “There’s nobody in this house. Except for you. And you’re leaving, aren’t you?” (459). As Dewis leaves, Vince has replaced Dodge lying on the sofa, “staring at the ceiling” after having