Provincetown Players’ Stage Productions Starring Eugene O’Neill

Abstract

The paper is devoted to three stage productions at Provincetown Players theatre featuring Eugene O’Neill as an actor: Bound East for Cardiff, Thirst and Before Breakfast (1916). For the first time in the Russian theatre studies an attempt is made to revive the stage productions based on Eugene O’Neill’s one-act plays. The findings in this study are derived from reviews by American theatre critics, books about the history of Provincetown Players theatre and memoirs by its staff members. Provincetown Players’ activity is looked at in the context of the socalled Little Theatre Movement. The full cast of three o’neillian stage productions is systemized. Also being explored is the creative tandem of O’Neill and director George Cram Cook, as well as the playwright’s collaboration with two set designers – William Zorach and his wife Marguerite. Besides the reconstruction of stage productions, the paper also analyzes three early one-act plays by O’Neill. Born in the Barrett House Hotel on Broadway into the family of famous actor James O’Neill, Eugene O’Neill never wanted to act on stage. However the article exposes O’Neill’s pursuit of his American dream about a new theatre while he was being involved in a stage birth of his own dramaturgy. The paper also examines O’Neill’s acting performance, his directorial debut in the Bound East for Cardiff stage production (a co-work with his colleague Edward James Ballantine); the first introduction of a black character in Thirst, and a young playwright experimenting with long monologues in the Before Breakfast production. The universality and continuing relevance of one-act plays are underlined in the course of the analysis of O’Neill’s work.

Keywords

• eugene o’neill
• provincetown players
• theatre history
• revival of the stage production
• one-act play
• american drama.