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May Playwright's Theatre: Clifford Odets: Heir to O'neill

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May Playwright's Theatre: Clifford Odets: Heir to O'neill NEWSLETTER SPRING 2015 May Playwright’s Theatre: Clifford Odets: Heir to O’Neill In the years after Eugene O’Neill’s amazing run of success in the 1920’s and early 1930’s, O’Neill all but disappeared from the public eye. Unknown to many, he was building a home in the Danville hills and continuing his writing. At this time, Clifford Odets became the toast of Broadway and the heir apparent to Eugene O’Neill. Writing in the tumultuous years of the Great Depression, Odets’ work was seen as both social activism and entertainment. This May, Playwrights’ Theater will feature staged readings in the Old Barn at the Eugene O’Neill Historic Site of two of Odets’ most important plays Waiting for Lefty on May 3rd Waiting for Lefty by by Clifford Odets, th New Phoenix Theatre Company. and Golden Boy on May 17 According to Vice President of Artistic Programming Eric Fraisher Hayes, “Waiting for Lefty epitomizes Odets’ ability to bring the struggles of the common man to the stage. It is both fierce in its call for social change as well as incredibly theatrical. By contrast, Golden Boy, the most popular and commercially successful of Odets’ works in the 1930’s, is more of a conventional drama involving popular subjects of its time, namely boxers, corrupt managers and gangsters.” This May highlights the broad writing talents of Clifford Odets, the most popular play- wright of the 1930’s. Reservations for both productions are available online at the Foundation website First Two Tao House Fellows Selected for Travis Bogard Artist in Residence Program Playwrights’ Theatre in May …………..…….. 1 Foundations’ First Tao House Fellows ….….. 1 Realizing a long-held goal, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House, launches the Travis Bogard Artist in Residence program in O’Neill Festival: A Season of Desire ………… 3 April, selecting two Tao House Fellows whose projects represent both the academic and creative fields of the performing arts. Student Days 2015: Experiences Shared ….. 4 While at Tao House, David Palmer, Assistant Professor of Philoso- National Park Service Report …………………. 5 phy at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, will work on a manu- Won’t You Join Us? …………………………….. 5 script relating to O’Neill’s plays, taking a “cognitive studies” ap- proach to the analysis of tragedy which has emerged in recent Getting Ready for O’Neill Studio Retreat ….... 6 years, due to advances in brain research and evolutionary psychol- ogy. Herman Daniel Farrell III, a professional playwright and Pro- NOTICE TO OUR MEMBERS: For our members, the Eugene O’Neill Foun- dation will continue to mail the Foundation Newsletter directly to you First fessor of Playwriting at the University of Kentucky, aims to create Class, giving you the convenience of a handy guide to Foundation activities the first draft of a “postmodern” play about Eugene O’Neill, his life and news right at your fingertips. The Newsletter will continue to be posted on our website (www.eugeneoneill.org) for non-members and others. and work. Continued on page 2... P.O. Box 402 • Danville, CA 94526-0402 • (925) 820-1818 [email protected] • www.EugeneOneill.org PG. 1 NEWSLETTER SPRING 2015 “Travis Bogard Artists In Residence Program” continued from page 1... The two Fellows were selected from ten stellar applicants for the program, which is de- signed to provide developing or established artists, scholars or critics of the performing arts the opportunity to work in the solitude and quiet which inspired Eugene O’Neill, America’s only Nobel Prizewinning playwright. The program is named for the late Travis Bogard, pro- fessor emeritus of Dramatic Arts at UC Berkeley and the O’Neill Foundation’s first artistic director. Soon after the Foundation was formed forty years ago, Professor Bogard envi- Travis Bogard sioned Tao House not only as a living memorial to Eugene O’Neill, but as a creative work- place for writers and scholars. O’Neill Foundation Co-President, Gary Schaub, says, “For many years the O’Neill Foundation has been look- ing to initiate the Artist in Residence program at Tao House, a goal our early mentor Travis Bogard set for us. The Foundation Board is very pleased that Travis’s dream is being realized with the appointment of our first two Tao House Fellows”. The first Fellow, David Palmer, will arrive early in April and spend a month working on the O’Neill section of a book tentatively entitled Evolution, Ethics and Tragedy: A Cognitive Studies Approach to the Plays of Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill. At Tao House he will focus on the late autobiographical plays and particularly Eu- gene’s brother, Jamie, whom he describes as “a man who is driven into crippling shame by his confrontation with his inability to realize his idealized self.” Herman Farrell will arrive in late May to revisit a project he began in 1983. A few months after graduating from Vassar he wrote an “epic play” Dreams of the Son: A Life of Eugene O’Neill which he now describes as melodramatic, reminiscent of the theatre of O’Neill’s father. After thirty years experience of researching and teaching O’Neill, including being selected three times as a playwright fellow at the National Playwrights Conference of the Eugene O’Neill Center in Waterford Con- necticut, he now intends to write a different type of play. An David Palmer award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Farrell’s most re- cent ventures include a touring production of The Voices of Student Veterans, a drama based on interviews with college student veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and Cousin’s Table, which involves a get-together of a multi- cultural family who haven’t been together since a falling out over the invasion of Iraq. He Herman Farrell earned a Peabody Award as co-writer of the HBO film Boycott. The Tao House Fellows will work in a specially-designed space in the Trunk House (named because it housed Carlotta’s Louis Vuitton luggage) in the courtyard of Tao House just below the window of O’Neill’s study. They will live at the San Damiano Retreat Center and travel a short distance to Tao House each day. Florence McAuley, head of the Foundation’s Advisory Board Committee which has developed the three year pilot program in collaboration with the National Park Service, explains that an evaluation panel of professionals assessed the projects and rated the applications, recommending that this first stage of the program include representatives from both the academic and creative fields. Members and friends of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation support this program and donations are gratefully received. Thank you for your support! P.O. Box 402 • Danville, CA 94526-0402 • (925) 820-1818 [email protected] • www.EugeneOneill.org PG. 2 NEWSLETTER SPRING 2015 Clifford Odets – the Heir to Eugene O’Neill Long known as the champion of the disenfranchised, playwright Clifford Odets (1906 - 1963) came on the scene in the early 1930s. He was widely seen as a successor to Eu- gene O’Neill as O’Neill began to retire from Broadway’s commercial pressures. While Odets was successful on Broadway and in Hollywood in the 1930s and early 1940s, O’Neill – having moved to the West Coast and to Tao House – rebounded with his famous “Tao House plays” including More Stately Mansions, The Iceman Cometh, A Moon for the Misbegotten and A Long Days Journey into Night – all written while O’Neill lived in Danville. Odets is most known for his socially relevant dramas which proved most influential during the Great Depression. Waiting for Lefty (1935) was Odets’ first great success. He learned his profession as an actor in repertory companies, including his role with the influential Clifford Odets photo courtesy of Wikipedia Group Theatre in New York as one of its original members. The Group Theatre empha- sized an acting technique (“The Method”) based on a system devised by Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavski, and developed further by Group Theater director Lee Strasberg. Odets became the Group’s primary playwright. Other plays followed, including Awake and Sing, Till the Day I Die, and the notable Golden Boy (1937). In the early 1940s, Odets transferred his interest to Hollywood as a screenwriter. His play, The Country Girl was a success in New York, and later adapted for a film starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. 2015 O’Neill Festival: A Season of Desire Following up on the incredible, sold-out run of last year’s The Iceman Man Cometh and the record-setting Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Eugene O’Neill Foundation is proud to announce that it will be partnering again with Role Players Ensemble for a Season of Desire. The 2015 O’Neill Festival will feature a production of the O’Neill classic Desire under the Elms at Tao House, while the Village Theatre in downtown Danville will be hosting Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. This year’s Festival will run September 4th – 27th. Tickets for the plays and other festival events will go on sale later this spring. P.O. Box 402 • Danville, CA 94526-0402 • (925) 820-1818 [email protected] • www.EugeneOneill.org PG. 3 NEWSLETTER SPRING 2015 Teen Participants Share their Experiences th from our 24 Annual Student Days Sixteen teenagers from seven high schools assembled at Tao House in the hills above Danville for the first of our two Student Days in March. It was a fun-filled day of drama and art under the guidance of actor/teacher Chad Deverman of Walnut Creek and Debby Koonce, retired art teacher from Moraga Junior High School.
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