The fifth annual O’Neill birthday celebration sponsored by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and Connecticut College began 15 October 2004 at the college’s Shain Library with a slide lecture by Robert A. Richter, author of Eugene O’Neill and Dat Ole Davil Sea: Maritime Influences in the Life and Works of Eugene O’Neill (see review in this volume). Published by Mystic Seaport, the book describes the maritime culture of New London during the playwright’s youth and traces his maritime experiences and their direct influence on his early plays—an influence that returns in Mourning Becomes Electra and Long Day’s Journey into Night. The afternoon ended with a book signing and reception.

Saturday’s program at the Center began with a panel discussion, “Why Produce O’Neill?,” by David Jaffe, director of the Center’s National Theater Institute (a semester-long residential program for college students), Zander Brietzke, president of the O’Neill Society, Joel Pfister of Wesleyan University, and Rob Richter. Brenda Murphy moderated. Asking rhetorically whether O’Neill is a museum piece or a provocative playwright who speaks to us today, Jaffe answered the question with responses to an email survey he had circulated to NTI alumni to “open a window into young audiences.” Several described the powerful effect of productions they had seen, of being validated by characters brimming with “the beauty and shame of living,” of O’Neill’s “horrible perfection,” and of perceiving the “loneliness behind the bravado.” Some expressed concern that too many young people don’t know O’Neill, or aren’t interested.

Noting that O’Neill was critical of “college boys” as scions of privilege, Zander Brietzke reminded listeners that O’Neill was a widely-read college dropout who wrote many bad plays, but that he persevered and in the great plays achieved a successful balance between his feelings and his professional calling and craft. Brietzke’s assertion that O’Neill requires the highest stan­dards of direction, production and acting to achieve maximum impact (an idea reiterated later in the day by others), and that it is difficult to perform O’Neill at the college or community theater level, elicited reactions to the effect that he can indeed be put across successfully in amateur productions, particularly with the early plays. Brietzke suggested that some directors are held back by the playwright’s unusual demands.

Joel Pfister proposed that the O’Neill Center spearhead a project to produce on video and on stage all of O’Neill’s fifty plays in full-scale pro­ductions by 2013, 100 years after he wrote the first of them. This would provide an invaluable resource for students of all ages and would enable them to learn, and to quote James Tyrone, unlearn more about the extent of O’Neill’s multifaceted contributions to American theater, culture, and thought. Pfister argued that O’Neill may be read in part as an historian of emotional life and why it might be important for productions of O’Neill’s plays to more complexly stage this history. From what we know of the unfinished 11-play cycle, and from what we can see in some of his mature plays, O’Neill shifted from simply dramatizing the psychological family to dramatizing the his­torical making of the psychological family. In subtle ways O’Neill explored the history that made the family that made O’Neill.

Rob Richter answered the question, “Why produce O’Neill?” with a simple “Why not?” Citing his experience in helping plan Connecticut’s first annual celebration six years ago, Richter recalled a widely held feeling at the time that O’Neill was too dark and depressing to appeal to young people. This feeling was found to be erroneous, with students responding enthusias­tically to readings and performances. Richter attributed this to the fact that young people deal with loneliness as part of growing up; O’Neill reminds them that they are not alone in feeling that way. He offers lessons without being overtly didactic, and many younger observers respond when exposed to them. All agreed with Pfister’s claim that we need to perform O’Neill as faithfully as possible, that as a playwright he is not given the credit he is due, that we must “trust” him. Or, as an audience member said, we must simply “let O’Neill happen.” The plays work when expertly done and we don’t need to worry about trying to engage interest.

Wendy Wasserstein’s keynote address after lunch paid tribute to the annual playwrights’ conferences of the O’Neill Center that were so influential in her development while at the Yale School of Drama. Uncommon Women and Others was selected for the l977 conference with a cast including Swoosie Kurtz and Judith Light. The transcendent value of the Center, she said, is as a place where budding playwrights can open their minds and be nurtured by people who truly believe in the theater and who know that above all a playwright must develop a voice and learn to trust it. She recalled the advice of mentor Lloyd Richards, who told her that while one’s characters can be ambiguous, the playwright must be totally unambiguous. Playwriting, she said, is the unique voice of American society, and speaking of her hometown she declared that it is the birthright of New York City high school students to be able to “see plays.” Acting on this conviction, in 1999 she began a program to take students to the theater who would otherwise have no opportunity or motivation to attend. For many of them, she said, this exposure to “humanity, ethics and humor” is a life-changing experience, reminding us that “the catharsis of Greece,” i.e., the dramatization of “character, choice and morality,” still works. Wasserstein drew an enthusiastic ovation.

The second afternoon session offered three O’Neill scenes superbly read by actors Joe Urla and Elizabeth Canavan that served as a springboard for discussion of how actors take on an O’Neill part. The pair began with a scene from A Moon for the Misbegotten, followed by Ms. Canavan’s excerpt from Before Breakfast, and concluded with Mr. Urla’s memorable rendition of the final scene from The Hairy Ape. David Jaffe then led a discussion of the challenges and rewards of interpreting O’Neill, of “unpacking the words.” O’Neill’s characters were described as being utterly “available,” filled with deep love and desperation and waiting to be inhabited. O’Neill sustains tension because he writes with truth and empathy, the words going on at length to memorable effect when spoken by experienced actors performing “without a net.”

To conclude the afternoon, a freewheeling discussion of the challenges of staging O’Neill by actor Brian Dennehy, actor/director Joe Grifasi, and Long Wharf Theatre Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein was moderated by set designer Skip Mercier. Dennehy repeated Mary McCarthy’s remark that O’Neill was “not a good writer, but a great one,” adding that the playwright wasn’t interested in the problems facing an actor or director because he really intended that his plays be read rather than performed. Edelstein said doing O’Neill is “a long, arduous hike that may kill you,” and that if you “go the distance” the best you can do is “wrestle him to a draw.” Taking on the big issues of love, life and family is exhilarating, however,” and O’Neill is there with you all the way if you do it right, even though you realize afterward how much you missed.” There are “few better fixes” than O’Neill, he said.

Grifasi talked about the tensions between O’Neill as prose artist and as poet, noting that even very good actors must work on this for a long time. His remark that there is often “too much” in O’Neill’s speeches led Edelstein to characterize an O’Neill play as an “assault,” with the calculated repetition and silences leaving one’s nerves exposed. “O’Neill wants you to go to that place so you go out of the theater changed.” He felt that the influence of the Greeks on O’Neill was perhaps greater than that of Ibsen and Strindberg.

Dennehy remarked that, like most artistic careers, O’Neill’s was a sort of accident, and praised Tony Kushner’s TLS article, “The Genius of O’Neill” (reprinted in the Eugene O’Neill Review 26 [2004]). He lamented the (understandable) fact that some of our most talented playwrights write for TV sitcoms because they pay so much better than the legitimate stage. To loud applause, he also lamented the lack of government support for New London’s Monte Cristo Cottage, that “precious spot in the human soul.” Reminiscing about his visit there with Vanessa Redgrave, he described it as a place where you “go to the source and touch the ghosts.” Theater people feel honored to do O’Neill, he continued, but they rarely feel they have “gotten it,” that there are only moments when they do. “You don’t do it, it does you.” The best actors, directors and writers are never satisfied, he said. He wished that actors in the US could revisit complex roles more often, as in Europe, because O’Neill plays need time and practice to learn what works and what doesn’t.

At a gala dinner concluding the celebration Dennehy received the 2004 Monte Cristo Award in recognition of his contributions to American theater, notably his Tony-award portrayal of James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey and his successes in The Iceman Cometh, Hughie, and A Touch of the Poet. For a profile in the New London Day by arts editor Kristina Dorsey, Dennehy said that doing O’Neill was like doing Shakespeare in the sense that he has his own language, but that O’Neill was more interested in ideas and emotions and probing into the soul than in the beauty of the language, and this is why he likes doing it. “You do it because it’s hard and because, when it works, it’s an enormous triumph.”

Brian Rogers
Connecticut College

 

The Eugene O’Neill Society’s 6^th International Conference
Provincetown, Massachusetts
“Where it all began”
15-20 June 2005

Wednesday, June 15

Arrivals: Registration/Orientation at Surfside Inn; Walking Tours, Exhibits available for early arrivees

5:00 Reception and buffet

7:15 Welcome

Zander Brietzke, President, The Eugene O’Neill Society
Richard Olson, Provincetown Conference Chair
Steven F. Bloom, Vice President, The Eugene O’Neill Society

7:30 Keynote Address

Brenda Murphy, “Inventing the Modern at the Provincetown”

9:00 Readings

Thursday, June 16

8:00 Session I: Inspiration in Provincetown

Robert A. Richter -- Capt. & Mrs. Cook of P-Town vs. Capt. & Mrs. Keeney of O’Neill’s Ile

Rosemary McLaughlin -- From Paterson to P’town: How a Silk Strike in New Jersey Inspired the Provincetown Players

Herman Daniel Farrell III -- O’Neill’s Exorcism: Confronting Suicide at Peaked Hill Bar

9:30 Session II: Connected to the Provincetown

Anne Fletcher -- A “Closed Shop”?: Max Gorelik and the Provincetown Players

David Roessel -- Mike Gold and the Provincetown Players

George Monteiro -- John Francis, Go-Between For Provincetown and the Players

11:00 Roundtable I: Provincetown — The Town, The Plays, and the Players

Jackson Bryer, Moderator

Panelists: Drew Eisenhower, Robert Sarlos, Cheryl Black, Leona Rust Egan, Jeff Kennedy, Judith Barlow

12:30 Lunch – on own EON Review Board meeting

2:00 Session III: O’Neill’s Early “Problem” Plays

Katie Johnson -- Representing Prostitution in O’Neill’s The Web

Karen Blansfield -- O’Neill’s “Lost” Plays Rediscovered

William Peterson -- Diff’rent: Variations on a Theme

3:30 Remembrance and Tribute to Ed Shaughnessy

3:45 Session IV: The Irish Influence

Nelson Ritschel -- O’Neill and Provincetown: the 1911 Influence of Synge & the Abbey Theatre

Michael O’Neill -- O’Neill’s Ireland: Old Sod or Blarney Bog?

Richard Brucher -- Anna Christie and Christy Mahon

5:30 Reception and O’Neill Exhibit/Wine & hors d’oeuvres at Pilgrim Monument Museum

7:30 Roundtable II: Directing/Producing/Performing O’Neill

Sheila Garvey, Moderator

Panelists: Ted Mann, Gordon Edelstein, Dan Sullivan, J Ranelli, Salome Jens

Friday, June 17

8:00 Session V: Genre Matters

Yvonne Shafer -- Eugene O’Neill and Comedy

Erika Rundle -- The Drama of Evolution in O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape: Tragedy or Comedy?

Dan Larner -- Feeling in Search of Form: Tragi-Comic Understructures in O’Neill and Glaspell

Mary Koutsoudaki -- O’Neill’s Greek Background

9:45 Session VI: Female Players and O’Neill/Females Playing with O’Neill

W. D. King -- Trouble in the Flesh: What Did Eugene O’Neill Look Like Naked?

Paul Roazen -- Letters & Poems from O’Neill to Louise Bryant

Carol DeBoer-Longworthy -- Neith Who? The Forgotten Woman of the Provincetown Players

11:15 Glaspell Keynote

Linda Ben-Zvi -- The Place of Provincetown in Susan Glaspell’s Writing

12:30 Lunch – on own

1:00 – 5:00 Glaspell Marathon Readings presented by the Provincetown Fringe Festival at the Provincetown Inn (Inheritors, Suppressed Desires, Woman’s Honor, and Ticlkess Time)

2:00 Session VII: O’Neill’s Bold, New American Drama

Sam Bernstein -- Making It, Madness, and Motherhood: The Deep Structure of O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun

Peter Civetta -- (Well, At Least) Lazarus Laughed: O’Neill, Religious Drama, and Stageability

Susan Harris Smith -- The Emperor Jones and National
Trauma

Elizabeth Oldman -- Yank’s Consciousness of Alienation in O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape

3:45 O’Neill Society Board Meeting

“Gods and Artists: A Book of Haiku,” Readings and discussion by Helena Bronnec’Wells

“O’Neill Congealed: A Showcase of Contemporary Literary Creativity in Provincetown,” presented by Jay Critchley Films and Exhibits

7:30 O’Neill Society Banquet followed by Arthur and Barbara Gelb’s Presentation: “Looking Back: The Gelbs’ Half-Century Researching Eugene O’Neill, 1946 – 2006,” with Ric Burns presenting outtakes from his forthcoming documentary

Saturday, June 18

8:00 Session VIII: O’Neill, the Poet

Maya Koreneva -- The Sun and Moon as Elements of the Dramatic Structure in O’Neill’s Early Plays

Eileen Herrmann-Miller -- The Sea versus Anna: Metaphoric Contrarieties

Rupendra Majumdar -- O’Neill’s Poetry: A Parallel Discourse

9:30 Session IX: The Road From Provincetown

Bette Mandl -- Revealing the Modern Mind: O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey from Provincetown

Stephen Black -- Hints of the Tragic Sense in O’Neill’s Early Plays

Kurt Eisen -- From Provincetown to Iceman: Theater, War, and American Modernism

11:00 Session X: O’Neill, Racism, and Anti-Semitism

Rick Eaton & Madeline Smith -- “Some of my best friends…”: The O’Neill­ Jewish Connection

Glenda Gill -- Eugene O’Neill and Paul Robeson: An Uneasy Collaboration in Four of O’Neill’s Early Plays

Martha Bower -- All God’s Chillun Got Wings: The Provincetown Players vs. the Angry Anglo-Saxon Protestants

12:30 Performance of Thirst by Mass Maritime Academy Players on Fishermen’s Wharf, followed by lunch at the Surf Club

2:45 Session XI: New Approaches to Susan Glaspell’s Theatre sponsored by the Susan Glaspell Society

Martha Carpentier, Moderator

Patricia Bryan -- Susan Glaspell’s “The Plea”: Foreshadowing Trifles and Concerns about Law and Justice

Lucia Sander -- A Trembling Hand, a Rocking Chair, and a Rocking Chair or Kitchen Sink: Glaspell, O’Neill, and their Early Dramatic Experiences

J. Ellen Gainor -- Susan Glaspell and the Question of an American Avant-Garde

Barbara Ozieblo -- Breaking New Ground: Glaspell on The Verge

4:30 Session XII: O’Neill on Stage

Laura Shea -- A Moon for the Misbegotten Onstage: Looking Beyond 1973

Tom Connolly -- Revering O’Neill to Death: Is “PoMo” O’Neill Possible?

Mariko Hori -- On Two Major Recent Productions of O’Neill in Japan

Dinner on own

8:00 Gala Night at the Theatre--A Provincetown Triple Bill

O’Neill’s The Rope, presented by Provincetown Theater Company and the Provincetown Repertory Theatre; Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, presented by Provincetown Fringe Festival; and the first two scenes of Jo Morello’s new play E.G.O., The Passions of Eugene Gladstone O’Neill, presented by special guest artists

Sunday, June 19

10:15 Roundtable III: Susan Glaspell in Context Sponsored by the Susan Glaspell Society

Linda Ben-Zvi, Moderator

Panelists: Sharon Friedman, Cheryl Black, J. Ellen Gainor, Marcia Noe, Barbara Ozieblo

11:45 O’Neill on the Dunes

Leona Rust Egan “Eugene O’Neill’s First Home: Siting the Former Peaked Hill Lifesaving Station”

12:30 Dune Tour and Lobster Bake

5:00 “Sundays at Five” concert: Excerpts from The Eugene O’Neill Songbook

7:00 Roundtable IV: Sexing O’Neill

Gary Vena, Moderator

Panelists: Steven F. Bloom, Zander Brietzke, Sheila Garvey, Glenda Frank

8:30 O’Neill Society Business meeting

Monday, June 20

8:30 Session XIII: All Roads Lead to Long Day’s Journey

Benjamin Opipari -- Structural Family Theory in Long Day’s Journey Into Night: a Family Systems Perspective

Glenda Frank -- The Loneliness of Mary Tyrone

Laurin Porter -- “Why do I feel so lonely?”: Literary Allusions and Gendered Space in Long Day’s Journey into Night

10:00 Roundtable V: Interpreting O’Neill for the public

Margaret Styles, National Park Service, Moderator

Panelists: Wendy Cooper, Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site, Patricia Fitzpatrick, Town of Provincetown, Sally Pavetti, Monte Cristo Cottage Museum/Library' TBA, The Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House

11:30 Dan Cawthorn presents: “The O’Neill Commemorative Walk in Danville”

12:30 Farewell luncheon

 

What’s on Tap

Books

Alexander, Doris. Eugene O’Neill’s Last Plays: Separating Art from Auto­biography. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

Available in late May, Alexander’s new work “corrects and expands the bio­graphical record on O’Neill, sharpens our understanding of his art, and dis­tinguishes the man and his life more clearly than ever from the creations that were inspired by, and drew on, that life” (qtd. from University of Georgia Press website). Alexander’s previous books include The Tempering of Eu­gene O’Neill and Eugene O’Neill’s Creative Struggle.

Glaspell, Susan. The Road to the Temple. Ed. Linda Ben-Zvi. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005.

This new edition of an out-of-print classic chronicling Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players is sure to be a must-have among O’Neillians.

Murphy, Brenda. The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Available in fall 2005, a perfect cap to the upcoming summer international conference!

Cornwell, Paul. Only by Failure: The Many Faces of the Impossible Life of Terence Gray. Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2004.

Biography of one of the leading directors of the art theater movement and producer of seven plays by O’Neill, including The Dreamy Kid, The Em­peror Jones, The Hairy Ape, Marco Millions, The Rope, Before Breakfast, and “Anna Christie.”

Törnqvist, Egil. Eugene O’Neill: A Playwright’s Theatre. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004.

An investigation of the formal aspects of the plays, including titles, settings in time and place, names, language, and connections and allusions to other works. Also includes detailed analyses of Bound East for Cardiff, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and A Touch of the Poet.

Gewirtz, Arthur, and Kolb, James J., ed. Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.

A thick collection of essays, the first four of which concern O’Neill and plays such as All God Chillun’s Got Wings, The Hairy Ape, and Strange Interlude.

Productions

A Moon for the Misbegotten. American Conservatory Theatre, San Fran­cisco, CA. 28 April-29 May. (415) 749-2ACT. www.act-sf.org.

“Anna Christie.” Arena Stage, Washington, D.C. 6 May-19 June. (202) 488­3300. www.arenastage.org.

Desire Under the Elms. American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA. 14 May-12 June. (617) 547-8300. www.amrep.org.

The Emperor Jones. The American Century Theater, Arlington, VA. 23 June­30 July. (703) 553-8782. www.americancentury.org.

Long Day ’s Journey into Night. Gloucester Stage Company, Gloucester, MA. 31 August-18 September. (978) 281-4099. www.gloucesterstage.com.

Rumor!
A Touch of the Poet
Starring Liam Neeson and Kaitlin Hopkins
Directed by Edward Hall
Roundabout Theater Company, New York, NY
September 2005