Back to Media Home Page

MARSHFIELD – “Bury the Dead,” by Irwin Shaw, will be performed by Campus Community Players at 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Dec. 8-10, in the Black Box Theatre in the Helen Connor Laird Fine Arts Building on the UW-Marshfield/Wood County campus, 2000 West 5th St., Marshfield.

The production, sponsored by the Laird Endowment Fund for the Arts, is under the direction of Emmy Kreilkamp, guest director from Bloomington, Ind. 

“Bury the Dead is significant for our time, especially now that we are at war,” Kreilkamp said. “I think it is vital to re-evaluate our reasons for participating in any war, given the immense destruction every war causes.” 

Bury the Dead portrays six dead soldiers who refuse to be buried during an unspecified war.  It is a play Kreilkamp has long been interested in, primarily because playwright Irwin Shaw uses the convention of corpses instead of live soldiers. 

“Shaw uses their deaths as a metaphor for mutiny, but by choosing to present the soldiers as dead, one cannot call them cowards or accuse them of being unpatriotic,” she said. “They’re dead; they’ve already given the supreme sacrifice for their country.  Yet they have some unfinished business on this earth; they still want to live.”

Ciara Blecka, a sophomore from Marshfield, is playing the role of Bess, a farmer’s wife.  Blecka said she was attracted to the production because of its message.  

 “The play is about people who were fighting, but really didn’t realize what they were fighting for,” she said. “These corpses came back to share that message, and to say that they still wanted to live their lives.”

Beau Schmidt, a freshman from Marshfield, plays Levy, one of the corpses.

“I can relate to (my character’s) motives,” Schmidt said. “He’s young, and was put on the front lines. He’s disposable. I can relate to his reasons for not wanting to be dead.”

Taryn Blecka, a sophomore from Marshfield, plays Julia, the girlfriend of one of the corpses.

“A lot of people don’t realize the emotional impact of war, just from watching TV,” she said.  “The play shows how war rips normal lives apart.”   

Kreilkamp, who is pursuing a doctorate in theatre at Indiana University, was invited to be a guest director and to teach Introduction to Theatre at UW-Marshfield/Wood County by Theatre Professor Steve Decker. Many of the plays Kreilkamp has directed concern people in extreme circumstances – emergency room nurses, apartheid in South Africa, the prison colony of Australia, and the 1944 revolt of the Sonderkommando (the unit in the crematoria) in Auschwitz.  Like Bury the Dead, many ask more questions than provide answers. 

“Bury the Dead is not a radical anti-war play. It is a play which argues that life is better than death,” Kreilkamp said. “The dead soldiers in the Bury the Dead say that they can only lie peacefully in their graves if they die for themselves or a cause that is their own.  Are American soldiers dying for a cause that is their own?  If our dead were to stand up in their graves, what would they say to us?”

Tickets for Bury the Dead are $10 in advance, $12 at the door.  The Campus Box Office is open 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. Monday through Friday and one hour before performances.  Tickets can be ordered by calling 389-6534.  VISA, MasterCard and Discover are accepted. All seating is reserved.  Tickets are non-refundable.

The Campus Community Players presents a wide variety of productions, including classical work, new plays, musicals and sometimes family oriented work. As a college theatre program, which also relies on members of the community in its productions, the primary goal of the program is the education of students. Many students have gone on to professional careers in acting, directing, playwriting, theatre education and theatrical production. This aim of teaching and learning requires a variety of theatrical genres, periods and styles which reflect the current contemporary theatre landscape. There are many opportunities to get involved both onstage and off. New faces are always welcome. Contact Steve Decker, assistant professor of Communication and Theatre Arts, at sdecker@uwc.edu, for more information.