Second Annual O’Neill Celebration at Waterford, CT

More than two hundred people gathered on the beautiful grounds of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center on the shore of Long Island Sound at Waterford, Connecticut, the childhood town of Eugene O’Neill, on Saturday, October 20, 2001, to celebrate the career and achievement of the great American playwright. Warm and sunny, it was a perfect day for O’Neill enthusiasts to enjoy the lectures and discussions, to eat a lunch al fresco, and to stroll the attractive grounds stretching to the water. The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center is built, ironically, on the Hammond Estate, the home of millionaire Edward Crowninshield Hammond, whom O’Neill heartily detested, basing the characters Harker in Long Day’s Journey and T. Stedman Harder in Moon for the Misbegotten on the unpopular magnate.

After welcoming remarks by J. Ranelli, Conference Program Director and founding member of the O’Neill Center, and Howard Sherman, the center’s Executive Director, playwright A. R. Gurney delivered the keynote address on O’Neill’s reputation and career, asserting that O’Neill is deservedly deemed as America’s greatest playwright, having won four Pulitizer Prizes and a Nobel Prize in 1936. It is an interesting irony, he observed, that the plays that gave O’Neill the Pulitizer are not considered as good as his last works, most of which he never saw performed. Also odd, Mr. Gurney said, is the sad fact that O’Neill’s plays are infrequently performed in American schools and colleges or in community and regional theaters. He also pointed out that O’Neill left no noticeable disciples, although many subsequent American plays have O’Neillian echoes. Following these remarks, Mr. Gurney discussed the frequently heard criticism that O’Neill could not write realistic dialogue, that his dialogue was “clunky.” With this criticism Mr. Gurney was in sharp disagreement: “O’Neill is not a clunky writer,” he said “and actors don’t complain about his dialogue.”

In the late 1950s and early 1960s O’Neill’s reputation began to soar as his great final plays were published and produced, and great stars and directors interpreted his work. But now, Mr. Gurney said, not much of his work is performed. Is O’Neill, then, still America’s greatest playwright? Very much so, he said, and Long Day’s Journey Into Night remains America’s greatest play. Journey represents the culmination of O’Neill’s life of experimentation, when all of his skills came together in one consummate play. His interest in the classics resulted in his following the Aristotelian unities, presenting a single action in one day. He also made use of masks, albeit psychological ones, which his characters gradually shed. Also, the symbolic devices explored in his early plays reappear in Long Day’s Journey: for example, the threatening jungle drumbeat in The Emperor Jones is replaced by the fog and foghorn, balefully shrouding visibility and understanding, and sounding the death knell of O’Neill’s stricken characters. And like Strindberg and Chekhov before him, O’Neill suggests, in Mr. Gurney’s words, “that it is the nature of life to frustrate you.” No one is responsible, because everyone is. There is no solution to the problems of the Tyrones. Mr. Gurney concluded that, unlike Miller’s Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, whose predicament might have been greatly alleviated if his employer had had a good retirement plan, O’Neill’s characters are doomed, because their creator sees human happiness as unattainable.

Another achievement of O’Neill, Mr. Gurney pointed out, was that he helped create a new audience. The theatrical menu when he began writing comprised melodramas comedies, and musicals, none of which challenged or enlightened the audience. O’Neill presented dramas that required audiences to think as well as applaud. His plays assumed that we are intelligent, responsive, thinking people. Mourning Becomes Electra assumes that we know who Electra was. Strange Interlude tries to put the audience ahead of the action through asides. Consequntly, we must view his plays with a double vision, since characters like Mannon and Agamemnon come home from a war, and the parallel events comment upon each other.

Mr. Gurney also said that O’Neill, like such other American writers as Dos
Passos and Hemingway, continually experimented with form. Early in his career O’Neill learned the traditional limitations of form and “pushed against them.” And many subsequent American playwrights continued to tinker meaningfully.

After Gurney’s address, a panel discussed the topic “From James to
O’Neill,” exploring the transition in American drama from the swashbuckling melodramatic style of James O’Neill, best known for The Count of Monte Cristo, to the humanistic work of his son Eugene. Participating were Jackson R. Bryer of the University of Maryland, Brenda Murphy of the University of Connecticut, and Dan Sullivan, the panel’s moderator, and director of the O’Neill Theater Center Critics Institute.

Mr. Sullivan began the discussion by asserting that it is a half truth to say that Eugene O’Neill was solely responsible for changing American theatre from swashbucklers to serious drama, since other playwrights abetted the change. Bryer added that nineteenth-century acting was unrealistic, since broad, exaggerated acting styles were necessitated by large theatres seating massive audiences. However, playwrights such as James A. Herne, in his Margaret Fleming (1891), led directly to O’Neill. Professor Murphy agreed that a play like Margaret Fleming, although a melodrama, was a serious and controversial realistic play. Herne’s drama contains an unfaithful husband, an illegitimate child that dies, and a heroine who goes blind when she discovers that her husband has been unfaithful. Not surprisingly, the play was banned in Boston since it contains a scene in which the mother unbuttons her blouse to suckle her baby. Another Edward Sheldon. In this play the independent­minded female protagonist ponders whether the unhappy marriage is to continue, decides against it, and the leads do not live happily ever after. Sheldon was clearly revealed as an influence on O’Neill. Professor Murphy concluded that O’Neill was influenced by Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw and an increasingly realistic American dramatic tradition.

Most importantly, American theatre was not ready for realistic writers like Henry James, William Dean Howells, Hamlin Garland and James A Herne. As the cultural climate altered to one that would be more suitable to the work of O’Neill, stagecraft changed, too, offering photographically realistic sets and skillfully manipulated electric lighting. Bryer added that American theater was not ready for tragedy, since most authors avoided creating villains, and showed most of their protagonists trying to do the right thing. O’Neill, on the other hand, had a tragic sense from the beginning, which gave a serious tone and depth to his work. Professor Murphy concluded that we resist melodrama today as a world view, since we are suspicious of happy endings and of an easily restored social order. A changed public attitude, along with the little theatre movement and the major influence of innovative European playwrights, produced a fertile ground for the work of O’Neill.

The last event of the conference was the presentation of the Monte Cristo Award to playwright Edward Albee by Mel Gussow of the New York Times. Unfortunately, Mr. Albee was ill and unable to attend the conference, but Mr. Gussow briefly summarized Mr. Albee’s career and paid tribute to his human rights activism, his generosity and his deeply humane viewpoint. He cited Albee as one of the four great American playwrights, the others being O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. Mr. Gussow added that, like O’Neill, Albee probed the problems of marriage, the family, and the failure of the American dream. The Monte Cristo Award is a bronze statue of O’Neill as a little boy in a cap, inspired by a photograph of the author, and sculpted by Norman Legassie

Robert S. McLean
City University of New York

DATES ARE SET FOR THE EON SOCIETY
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
AT O’NEILL’S LE PLESSIS

Thierry Dubost and Diane Schinnerer are co-chairing the Society’s next grand international conference. Theme for papers will be very broad so as to encourage wide participation.

Centered in Tours, France, the conference will run from Thursday through Sunday, June 5 through 9 of 2003.

Registration fee is $150 for each participant and includes the cocktail party and transportation to Le Plessis as well as the full conference. All afternoon and evening outings will be optional at an additional cost. The wine tasting trip to the Loire Vallley, the tour of the Chenonceaux castle, and fine dinner at Troglodyte restaurant will be optional at an additional cost. The $197 room daily fee is for two people at L’Hotel de l’Univers and includes the two breaks per day, the conference room, and breakfast and lunch served in one hour.

All participants will be in charge of securing their own transportation to and from Tours.

Diane Schinnerer will put out a call for papers. Steve Black, Jackson Bryer, Cynthia McCown and Brenda Murphy will each read papers and determine which will be accepted.

Start saving your mileage and spare change now for this once in a lifetime experience.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY MINUTES FROM 12/29/01 EON SOCIETY
BOARD MEETING at the MLA in NEW ORLEANS

Present at the annual board meeting were president Steve Black, Sheila Hickey Garvey, Diane Schinnerer, Zander Brietzke, Cynthia McCown, Jackson Bryer, Brenda Murphy, George Monteiro, Bill Demastes, Bob Vorlicky, Richard Sater.

There is $19,286.65 in the treasury.
Paid up members total 261.

Steve Black will cover the ALA in Long Beach in 2002. Zander Brietze will lead the MLA in New York in 2002, Cynthia McCown will head the ALA at Cambridge in 2003.

No action was taken regarding publication of the Review and/or the eoneill.com volume. The board did pass a motion unanimously that is it goes forward with the eoneill.com publication, the Society must hold the copyright to the publication, have in place rules for the succession of editor, and rules for publication.

The Le Plessis Conference was approved for June 5 through June 9 of 2003. Diane Schinnerer will be in charge of the call for papers. There will be no restrictive theme for the papers, as the Society wishes to encourage participation.

The topic of who will publish papers from the conference was discussed. It was moved, seconded and passed unanimously that “When the Society sponsors a conference, the Society will decide how the papers are published.” 

The following was approved for the Le Plessis Conference:

Registration fee $175 for each participant if this covers all expenses. All family members who wish to go on tours to Le Plessis, wine tasting and castle hopping, will pay extra to cover their expenses. The registration fee should cover cost of mailings, programs, conference room with seating for 100 +, long table and 5 chairs for presenters, mikes for presenters, all coffee breaks (coffee, tea, sodas, cookies), bus to Le Plessis, cocktail makings for Le Plessis, and whatever, if any, O’Neill entertainment is staged. The $110 room daily fee is for two people at L’Hotel de l’Univers and includes the two breaks per day, the conference room, and breakfast and lunch served in one hour.