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O'Neill: Son and Playwright
Book by Sheaffer, Louis
543 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1968
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August 12, 2011
So...I've been doing a lot of research on Eugene O'Neill because I produced THE ICEMAN COMETH at Washington State Penitentiary this year. I also teach THE HAIRY APE every year, so...it makes sense to look this man up. And...the landmark biography by Louis Sheaffer deserved its two-tome length and its Pulitzer Prize...in addition, to deserving the respect Louis Sheaffer gave it by researching this complicated man for 15 years. The think I like the best about this first book is the fact that I don't like Eugene O'Neill, and, yet, I continue to turn the pages. He is endlessly fascinating and infuriating. I'm also learning a lot about the early years of American Theater production. The Provincetown Players were technically the first "community theater" and then that community theater/amateur theater grew into a mid-career theater and then some of its founders became "established artists". The fusing of the lines of production was how production began in the United States, and with the regional theater movement, all of those original habits changed. I think that the regional theater movement is dying, and we in the theater world could learn about how to fix that by reading our founders' habits. Anyway, a fascinating read, and a thought-provoking one.
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