By the time Buried Child opened in New York in 1978, Sam Shepard was well-established as a counterculture playwright. The play earned him his unprecedented tenth Obie Award—no other American playwright had garnered more than two of Off-Broadway's highest honor. But with Buried Child Shepard had also found his way into the mainstream theatre, complete with larger audiences, critical raves from the popular press, and the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1979.

Although admitting Shepard was definitely not "commercial," the Nation's Harold Clurman, in his review of the Buried Child premiere at the Theatre for a New City on October 19,1978, called him "quintessentially American," and asserted, "I am convinced that he is not only a genuinely gifted but a meaningful writer." To illustrate Shepard's importance to the theatre and New York at the time of the production, Clurman observed, "The production cost $2,000: the actors receive a pittance...