Shaw's Bury the Dead to Receive L.A. Staging

By Adam Hetrick
23 Jul 2008

The Los Angeles theatrical ensemble The Actors' Gang will stage Irwin Shaw's 1935 anti-war drama Bury the Dead, beginning Aug. 14.

Matt Huffman directs the work set "'in the second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow night.' Bury the Dead is the story of six dead soldiers who doggedly refuse to be buried - thereby creating a national crisis that is at once sad, moving and wickedly funny."

"Shaw was writing at the same time as Clifford Odets," Huffman said in a statement. "At its heart, Bury the Dead is all about class struggle. In all wars, it's the lower classes, the people with no resources, who are most affected and displaced. When the industrial military complex, the 'war machine,' turns on and starts to turn a profit, it rolls over all human life unlucky enough to be in the way."

Bury the Dead made a short-lived Broadway debut in 1936. Shaw's plays include Siege, The Gentle People, Retreat to Pleasure, Sons and Soldiers, The Assassin and Children and Their Games. Among his works as a novelist are "Sailor off the Bremen and Other Stories," "The Young Lions," "Troubled Air," "Lucy Crown," "Acceptable Losses" and "Rich Man, Poor Man."

Bury the Dead officially opens Aug. 16 and will run through Sept. 13. Tickets are available by phoning (310) 838-4264 or by visiting TheActorsGang.com.

The Actors' Gang is located in the Ivy Substation at 9070 Venice Boulevard in Culver City.