Three new Artists in Residence have been selected for the 2017 Travis Bogard Residence Program at Tao House, bringing with them an impressive breadth of scholarship. Their projects include the translation of a Chilean playwright’s book of aesthetic theory, a performance revealing the relationship between Eugene O’Neill and Shakespeare, and a manuscript describing the artistic […]

Theater, May 6-7 in Danville Two plays on a theme of mental illness and modern psychology mark the next Playwrights’ Theater event of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in Danville.  The production will be presented in the Old Barn at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site on May 6 and May 7. The May Playwrights’ Theater […]

Tao House was built to be Eugene and Carlotta’s Eden. “We have a beautiful site in the hills of the San Ramon Valley with one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen,” wrote O’Neill in 1937. Having lived a vagabond lifestyle in hotels and rented houses around the world, O’Neill and his wife hoped […]

What better company could a playwright ask for than the likes of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin! In November, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City inducted Eugene O’Neill into Poets’ Corner, celebrating his legacy and place among the luminaries of American literature. O’Neill’s induction was held […]

2016 HAS BEEN A VERY PRODUCTIVE YEAR FOR THE FOUNDATION! Thanks to the generous support of our donors, we’ve been able to produce many successful events as we celebrated both the National Park Service and Eugene O’Neill Centennials, 1916-2016. Among our many activities: – Script in Hand Performances – Beyond the Horizon and Bound East […]

On Being a Tao House Fellow David Palmer, Massachusetts Maritime Academy June 4, 2015 My Tao House Fellowship in the Travis Bogard Artist-in-Residence Program at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site was exceptionally valuable, not just for enabling me to pursue the project I had planned but also for the serendipitous ways it led me […]

With several sold-out shows of The Emperor Jones and a great reception of the new play N, the 17th Annual Eugene O’Neill Festival “Revolution” came to a close on October 2. The reviews were outstanding! “…a powerful portrait of a forceful figure that may have met his match in the most shadowy recesses of his […]

At the inception of the sound era Eugene O’Neill wrote George Jean Nathan expressing the hope that “the day may come when there will develop a sort of Theatre Guild ‘talky’ organization that will be able to rely only on the big cities for its audiences.”[i] Unfortunately, during O’Neill’s lifetime film was primarily a form […]

On November 1, 1920, the Provincetown Players and Eugene O’Neill became overnight sensations with the premiere of O’Neill’s play The Emperor Jones. The play’s premiere was significant in two ways. For the first time in mainstream American Theatre, there was a production featuring a full commitment to the principles of the Art Theatre movement. The […]

Eugene and Carlotta O’Neill purchased 158 acres of land, built their home, Tao House, and lived in Danville’s western hills from 1937-1944. In this isolated rural sanctuary with its views of the valley and Mount Diablo, he wrote his last, great plays. They sold the property to Arthur and Charlotte Miller who recalled that O’Neill […]