ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

The editors acknowledge with gratitude the contributions made to this publication by a number of persons and institutions. Brian Rogers, librarian of the Charles E. Shain Library at Con¬necticut College, New London, permitted us to reprint the text of Kenton's typescript, part of the Louis Sheaffer Eugene O'Neill Collection, and offered patient and friendly assistance in deciphering obscurities in the document.

Donald Gallup and the American Literature Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University provided Carl Van Vechten's photograph of Edna Kenton; Joseph Solomon, executor of the estate of Carl Van Vechten, permitted us to publish it. Arthur Gelb, the late Adele Heller, Cheryl Black, and Stephen Kennedy Murphy assisted in researching materials on Kenton; the late Leon Edel shared personal reminis-cences; Robert Karoly Sarlós answered our questions concerning the Provincet¬own Theatre; the Fales Library at New York University and the Theatre Collection at Harvard University reproduced essential materials.

Bernadette Smyth, Ingrid Strange, Alan Margolies, and Marc Singer provided invaluable assistance with the preparation of the typescript.

 

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CO-EDITOR'S FOREWORD
 

It was Travis Bogard's idea to publish Edna Kenton's history of the Provincetown Players.  It occurred to him in May 1995, when he and I were in New London, Connecticut, exploring the riches of the then recently acquired Louis Sheaffer Eugene O'Neill Collection at the Charles E. Shain Library of Connecticut College.  He proposed that we edit the text jointly, with duties divided as they had been in our two previous editorial collaborations, “The Theatre We Worked For”: The Letters of Eugene O'Neill to Kenneth Macgowan (1982) and Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill (1988).  I would have primary responsibility for the preparation of the text itself; he would prepare the introduction about Kenton and her role in the Provincetown; and we would each also check the other's work.

 

At the time of Travis's death, on April 5, 1997, he had completed a final draft of his introduction.  It is published here in virtually the form he left it; I have made a very few minor editorial changes and added some information about Edna Kenton that I discovered, with the assistance of Cheryl Black, after Travis's death.  He had also gone over my edited text carefully and made many helpful comments and suggestions.

 

Kenton's history of the Provincetown Players has been edited from what appears to be the most complete and latest version of the text, a typescript in the Sheaffer Collection.  Earlier, sometimes incomplete, versions survive in the Fales Library at New York University; these were occasionally used when the text from the Sheaffer Collection was unclear.  Kenton's typescript includes the texts of the programs for many of the Provincetown's forty-two “bills” over its seven seasons of existence.  In some cases, Kenton simply inserted a copy of the actual program for a bill in the manuscript of her history; in other instances, she transcribed the information.  In our editing, we have tried, insofar as possible, to reproduce accurately the design and orthography of these programs.  For the listings which are literally original programs, we have transcribed spelling exactly as it appears, even when it seems to be inconsistent with that elsewhere in the manuscript.  For programs which Kenton transcribed, we have occasionally corrected spelling for consistency.

 

Similarly, in the text of the history itself, we have silently corrected spelling and punctuation errors and have sometimes supplied punctuation or (in brackets) a word, a date, or a name to clarify meaning.  Kenton always rendered words like faraway, backdrop, and bylaws as two words; we have silently made them one word.  She also customarily listed play titles in quotation marks; we have converted them to italics.  We have not, however, made these sorts of editorial changes in instances where Kenton inserted theatre playbills or flyers or newspaper articles or advertisements directly into her text.  We have also silently corrected Kenton's quotations (p.24) from George Cram Cook's Greek Coins so that they accurately conform with what actually appears in Cook's book.

 

We have kept our editorial notes to a minimum, deciding not to question some of Kenton's more dubious claims: her assertion (p.17) that Constancy requires “a sea set” (a balcony is required but not the ocean); her citing (p. 18) the dimensions of the wharf shed as “twenty-five feet square” and "fifteen feet high” (Robert Sarlós says it was between twenty-four and twenty-six feet wide, thirty-four to thirty-six feet long, and twenty-four to twenty-six feet high); her insistence (p. 124) that George Cram Cook directed the premiere of The Emperor Jones; and her statement (p. 156) that “The Provincetown Players' production of Bound East for Cardiff and Thirst led to the publication of Eugene O'Neill's first volume of plays, Thirst (Thirst, of course, appeared in 1914, well before the Provincetown began producing O'Neill's plays).  Doubtless, there are numerous other debatable and even certifiably incorrect statements in Kenton's history; but our intention is to bring it into print, not to argue for its total accuracy.  We present it as one eyewitness's account, subject to the prejudices and memory lapses such accounts invariably carry, but also invaluable for its authenticity.  We leave it to future commentators to analyze it.

 

Finally, a few words about Travis Bogard.  While I only knew Travis for the last eighteen years of his extraordinarily productive and rich life, in that time we became far more than just professional collaborators.  Although he was certainly the senior member of our partnership—not only in years but also in knowledge of our subject matter—he never made me feel as if I was anything other than an equal.  We were friends who worked together, laughed together, traveled together, shared hotel and motel rooms, went to the theatre together (all too infrequently, it now seems), enjoyed many good meals together (Travis always insisted on preparing a full breakfast for me whenever I stayed with him in Berkeley or Anchor Bay), and talked endlessly together of our mutual love of the performing arts.  I larned a great deal from him; but, more importantly, I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have known him.  While I was always aware of Travis's penchant for not suffering incompetence or foolishness gladly and his reputation for being, on occasion, gruff and abrupt, never once in all our time together did I feel that side of him directed at me.  Perhaps presumptuously, I took that as a compliment and evidence that he felt about me the same as I felt about him.  I miss him very much, and I lament that I will never work with him again and will never hear again his beautiful singing voice.  I would like this last of our editorial collaborations to stand as tribute to Travis, a scholar of international repute and the best of friends.

 

Jackson R. Bryer