Williams, Miller and o’neill American Dramatists of the Mid-20th Century

Eugene O’Neill and 20th Century Drama

An international drama During the 20th century (especially after World War I) Western drama became more unified and less the product of separate national literary traditions. Realism, naturalism, and symbolism (and various combinations of these) continued to inform important plays.

Experiments For most of 20th- century theatre, realism was the mainstream. There were some, however, who turned their backs on realism. Realism originally began as an experiment to make theatre more useful to society—a reaction against melodrama, highly romanticized plays— and realism has become the dominant form of theatre in the 20th-century. There have been some experiments, though, which have allowed for more adventurous innovation in mainstream theatre.

Early 20th century naturalism Among the many 20th-century playwrights who wrote what can be broadly termed naturalist dramas were Gerhart Hauptmann (German), John Galsworthy (English), John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey (Irish), and Eugene O'Neill, Clifford Odets, and Lillian Hellman (American).

Eugene O’Neill

Lillian Hellman

Clifford Odets

International influences Three vital figures of 20th-century drama are the American Eugene O'Neill, the German Bertolt Brecht, and the Italian Luigi Pirandello.

Eugene O’Neill Three vital figures of 20th-century drama are the American Eugene O'Neill, the German Bertolt Brecht, and the Italian Luigi Pirandello. O'Neill's body of plays in many forms— naturalistic, expressionist, symbolic, psychological—won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and indicated the coming- of-age of American drama.

Brecht Brecht wrote dramas of ideas, usually promulgating socialist or Marxist theory. In order to make his audience more intellectually receptive to his theses, he endeavored—by using expressionist techniques—to make them continually aware that they were watching a play, not vicariously experiencing reality.

Pirandello For Pirandello, too, it was paramount to fix an awareness of his plays as theater; indeed, the major philosophical concern of his dramas is the difficulty of differentiating between illusion and reality.

The rise of realism In the 1920s, realism had become widespread in England, France, and the United States; in the U.S. theatre boomed— There were 200 to 275 new productions a year average. One of the important groups that enhanced the theatrical presence in the U.S. was the Theatre Guild, founded in 1919 with the intention of bringing important foreign works to improve theatre in the U.S. By the mid 1920s, playwrights the United States were also competing to have their works produced by the Theatre Guild. Perhaps the most significant American playwright to have plays produced by the Theatre Guild was Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953), with five of his plays appearing at one time in New York during the 1924-25 season. O’Neill helped establish serious realistic Drama as the main Broadway form. His Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Desire Under The Elms are two of his great serious dramas.

The New Stagecraft Notable American Designers Robert Edmond Jones The New Stagecraft Also in the 1920s, came something called "The New Stagecraft."  The Theatrical Syndicate had pretty much controlled American theatre till around 1915. But developing around 1910 was a loose-knit group of what came to be known as the "little theatres." The Provincetown Players introduced the work of O’Neill, and the Washington Square Players, which later evolved into the Theatre Guild, encouraged the New Stagecraft. Notable American Designers Two major American designers who advocated this New Stagecraft were Robert Edmund Jones (1887-1954) and Lee Simonson (1888-1967). Both were major forces in American theatrical design in the first half of 20th-century, moving away from realism and towards suggestion and mood--perhaps a realism of mood and feeling would describe its "realist" origins. Lee Simonson

HE WHO GETS SLAPPED, Sets and costumes designed by Lee Simonson, The Theatre Guild, 1922

Production photo from DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, 1924 JONES’ design for O’Neill’s DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS

Robert Edmond Jones design for O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH

The Provincetown Players

Musical revue But during the 1920s, as well, a period known as the roaring twenties- -the American musical theatre began to develop more fully, with the Ziegfeld Follies offering variety acts and introducing songwriters and performers to theatre audiences.

Worker’s Theatre During the decade of the twenties, there were also the beginnings of the Workers’ Theatre Movement. In 1926, a small group of authors and theater directors formed the Workers’ Drama League, and the New Playwrights’ Theatre formed the next year.  Both hoped to present drama that had some social significance and would deal with some of the problems of the day. The workers’ theatre movement would not develop fully in the United States until after the stock market crash of October 1929.

WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL The Glencairn Plays—filmed together as The Long Voyage Home: Bound East for Cardiff, 1914 In The Zone, 1917 The Long Voyage Home, 1917 Moon of the Caribbees, 1918

Other one-act plays A Wife for a Life, 1913 Before Breakfast, 1916 The Web, 1913 Ile, 1917 Thirst, 1913 The Rope, 1918 Recklessness, 1913 Shell Shock, 1918 Warnings, 1913 The Dreamy Kid, 1918 Fog, 1914 Where the Cross Is Made, 1918 Abortion, 1914 Exorcism 1919 The Movie Man: A Comedy, 1914 The Sniper, 1915

Bread and Butter, 1914 Anna Christie, 1920 - Pulitzer Prize, 1922 Servitude, 1914 The Emperor Jones, 1920 The Personal Equation, 1915 Diff'rent, 1921 Now I Ask You, 1916 The First Man, 1922 Beyond the Horizon, 1918 - Pulitzer Prize, 1920 The Hairy Ape, 1922 The Straw, 1919 The Fountain, 1923 Chris Christophersen, 1919 Gold, 1920

WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL Marco Millions, 1923–25 All God's Chillun Got Wings, 1924 Welded, 1924 Desire Under the Elms, 1925 Lazarus Laughed, 1925–26 The Great God Brown, 1926 Strange Interlude, 1928 - Pulitzer Prize Dynamo, 1929 Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931 Ah, Wilderness!, 1933 Days Without End, 1933

WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published 1940, first performed 1946

WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL Hughie, written 1941, first performed 1959 Long Day's Journey Into Night, written 1941, first performed 1956 - Pulitzer Prize 1957

WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL A Moon for the Misbegotten, written 1941–1943, first performed 1947

A Touch of the Poet, completed in 1942, first performed 1958 More Stately Mansions, second draft found in O'Neill's papers, first performed 1967

AH, WILDERNESS at ACT (San Francisco - October 2015)

HUGHIE on Broadway - 2016 Announced earlier this year, Forest Whitaker will make his Broadway debut next spring in a revival of “Hughie,” a play by Eugene O’Neill, set in a New York City hotel in 1928, and centers on a hustler named Erie Smith, who confides in a night clerk. The production has now shored-up its team both in front of and behind the camera, and set a theater and opening date. Tony Award winner Frank Wood has joined the production, and will star opposite Whitaker in the play, which will be housed at the Booth Theatre, with performances (reviews) set to begin on February 5, 2016, with an official opening on February 25 for a limited engagement. O'Neil wrote the play in the 1940s, and it was first staged on Broadway in 1964, starring Jason Robards. This revival will be directed by Michael Grandage, former artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London, who won a 2010 Tony Award for his direction of “Red.” There was a 1975 revival that starred Ben Gazzara, followed by another revival, in 1996, starring Al Pacino.

Arthur Miller Born in 1915 in New York City His father’s business failed because of the Depression Family moved around a lot because of poverty Attended the University of Michigan Dad had a garment manufacturing business. Explain Depression

Returned to NYC after graduating college No luck with writing! Finally had a play of his on Broadway All My Sons (1947) In 1949 he wrote Death of a Salesman

He Married Marilyn Monroe Divorced after a few years Had three wives altogether Wrote The Crucible in the early 1950s Was accused of being a Communist Died in 2005 Communism: a type of government that believes everyone should chip in equally and get equal benefits (from each according to his ability, to each according to his need). Why bad? Russia and China; also, execution of ideal is difficult

Up close – Arthur Miller Arthur Miller was one of the major dramatists of the twentieth century. In the years before his death he often was called the “greatest living American playwright”. BORN October 17, 1925 DIED February 10, 2005 SOURCE: Marino, Stephen. "Arthur Miller". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 May 2008 [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3116, accessed September 2010.]

He earned this reputation during a career of more than seventy years, from his first plays as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan in the 1930s to his achieved critical success in the 1940s with All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). In the 1950s he wrote The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955), refused to “name names” at his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and had a celebrated marriage to the film actress Marilyn Monroe.

He produced a critically acclaimed autobiography, Timebends (1987), and premiered new plays on Broadway and in London in the 1990s. In the new millennium, Miller remained as active as at the beginning of his career, publishing a collection of essays, Echoes Down the Corridor (2000), and completing two new plays, Resurrection Blues (2002) and Finishing the Picture (2004), which premiered a few months before his death.

Recipient of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and A View From the Bridge... ALL MY SONS on Broadway with John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Josh Lucas and Katie Holmes (2008).

Death of a Salesman

American Actors in the title role of WILLY LOMAN Brian Dennehy Philip Seymour Hoffman

...the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman, the Tony Award for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, and Lifetime Achievement and the Olivier Award for Broken Glass...

...Miller clearly ranks with the other truly great figures of American drama – Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee – and the pantheon of great world dramatists, such as Chekov, Strindberg, Shaw and Beckett. 

Broadway revival of A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, 2009-10

Arthur Miller was not only a literary giant, but also one of the more significant political, cultural, and social figures of his time, well-known as a man of conviction, with rock-solid integrity, who frequently took popular and unpopular stands on many issues. At his death, the front page headline of The New York Times called him the “moral voice of the American stage”. In the great themes of his work – guilt and betrayal, family and society, individual and social conscience, private and public responsibility – he confronted the ethical issues of his time.

In his own words...

The Creation of the World and Other Business Plays by Arthur Miller The Golden Years The Creation of the World and Other Business The Man Who Had All the Luck The Archbishop’s Ceiling All My Sons The American Clock Death of a Salesman Playing for Time An Enemy of the People The Ride Down Mt. Morgan The Crucible Broken Glass A View from the Bridge Mr. Peters’ Connections After the Fall Resurrection Blues A Memory of Two Mondays Finishing the Picture Incident at Vichy   The Price

One-Act Plays A View from the Bridge (one-act version) A Memory of Two Mondays Fame / The Reason Why Two Way Mirror: Elegy for a Lady Some Kind of Love Story Danger: Memory! I Can’t Remember Anything Clara The Last Yankee Screenplays The Misfits Everybody Wins The Crucible Autobiography Timebends

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)

Born Thomas Lanier Williams in Columbus, Mississippi. Moved to St Louis in 1918. 1929 attended University of Missouri.

1931 Worked at a shoe company where he met a man named Stanley Kowalski. 1939 -Moved to New Orleans. Changed his name to Tennessee. Wrote for the WPA.

1944 - First play The Glass Menagerie staged in Chicago, then New York for over five hundred performances. The play won New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award

1947 - A Streetcar Named Desire wins the Pulitzer Prize. 1951- The play is made into a highly successful film starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh.

1955 - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof wins the Pulitzer Prize. 1958 - Made into a movie starring Paul Newman and Ellizabeth Taylor.

Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cat on a Hot tin Roof.

Andy Warhol and Tennessee Williams, 1967.

1961- Williams’ long time companion, Frank Merlo died, plunging Williams into depression and dependence on prescription drugs. Williams wrote more plays, two novels, and an autobiography, but was no longer a successful author. He died in 1983. His works