 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||
 |
|
||||||||
T 2008 O'Neill International Conference Past Foundation Events 2008
O'Neill International Conference
|
he
Foundation hosts a number of events in the community of Danville,
California throughout the year, including the Eugene O'Neill Festival,
Playwrights' Theatre and Artist Days at Tao House. You can find
the details for upcoming events below:International Conference in Danville Will Focus on ‘O’Neill’s Global Legacy’
Presentations of academic papers, panel discussions, performances, an awards dinner and tours will highlight a five-day conference focused on the playwright Eugene O’Neill that will open June 11 in Danville, attracting conferees from throughout the United States and at least seven foreign countries.
In all, 100 people with a devotion to the famed playwright and his award-winning works are expected to attend the event, the theme of which is “O’Neill’s Global Legacy.” Conferees from foreign countries, many representing educational institutions, include those from Canada, Tunisia, Belgium, France, China, Russia and India.
The conference is sponsored by the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in partnership with the National Park Service, which maintains O’Neill’s Tao House estate in Danville as a National Historic Site, and the Eugene O’Neill Society. It was at Tao House during the late Thirties and early Forties that O’Neill wrote his last six plays, including “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” both of which earned him the Pulitzer Prize.
Based at the San Ramon Marriott Hotel, the conference will include 10 panels of O’Neill experts discussing such topics as “O’Neill on the World Stage” and “ Staging O’Neill.”
Two productions that were the centerpiece of the annual O’Neill Festival in Danville last year will be performed during the conference.
San Francisco Bay Area director Daren A.C. Carollo will direct “O'Neill: TheGenius in His Soul,”a program of poetry by O'Neill intertwined with 11 songs from his plays on June 13. The poems and music will be performed by Bobbie and Keith Barlow, of the Diablo Light Opera Company and drama professor Dan Cawthon and actress Susan Jackson, a member of the foundation board.
A dramatic interpretation of “Tomorrow,” O’Neill’s only published short story that was published in 1917, will be presented on June 14 in the Old Barn at Tao House by the Word for Word Performing Arts Company of San Francisco. The group is noted for staging short stories and performing every word an author has written.The performance features Bay Area actors Patrick Alparone, Joel Mullenix, David J. Winter, and Paul Finocchiaro.
A program of sea chanties that O’Neill was fond of will be performed at Tao House on June 12.
Conferees will be invited to tour the O’Neill Commemorative in Front Street Park in downtown Danville; the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, where there will be an O’Neill exhibit; Tao House, and Livermore Valley wineries.
At an awards dinner on June 12, three individuals will be honored for their contributions to the American theatre, academia and literature.
The O’Neill Foundation will honor Robert Brustein, one of the major forces in American theatre, with its prestigious Tao House Award, last given to Edward Hastings, founding member and former executive and artistic director of the American Conservatory Theatre (A. C. T.) in San Francisco.
The society will present its Silver Medallion to Stephen Black, professor emeritus of English at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. and author of Eugene O’Neill:Beyond Mourning and Tragedy”; and Jackson Bryer, professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland and author of several books on O’Neill and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Black, a previous recipient of the Tao House Award, and Bryer are past presidents of the Eugene O’Neill Society.
Brustein is founding director of the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theatres.
Carol Sherrill, former board president of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, and a member of the Honorary Board of Directors, is chairing a committee planning the conference.
Serving with her is foundation president Gary Schaub and fellow board members Trudy McMahon, Eileen Hermann Miller, and Dan Cawthon. Also, Wendy Cooper, Diane Schinnerer (who is also secretary of the Eugene O’Neill Society), Carol Lea Jones, Florence McAuley and Linda Best, all members of the foundation’s Honorary Board. Loucey DeAtley, the wife of board member Gary DeAtley, is coordinating visit hospitality arrangements.
Student Days at Tao House
A record number of students attended 2008 Student Days, a program offering professional training by authorities in drama, art, photography and writing to high school students at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site, Tao House, in Danville.
This year, 116 students—a record—from 19 high schools in the East Bay was accepted for the program this year. Limited resources prevented an additional 30 students from attending. As was the case last year, the 2008 program was funded in large part by the Charles and Shirlene Clark Family Foundation of Lodi.
Plans call for displaying artwork created by the students. Among the locations: The O’Neill International Conference in Danville in June and the Museum of the San Ramon Valley, Danville.
Student Days is a program of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in partnership with the National Park Service.
Artist Days at Tao House
Each year, Bay Area artists are selected to create new works in the natural setting of the Tao House estate. Works are displayed later in various venues.
The foundation, in partnership with the National Park Service and the Danville Area Cultural Alliance, inaugurated this program in 1998. Tao House is opened on specific days in the spring for artists of all disciplines.
Visiting Artist Program
The first Visiting Artist at Tao House was Michael O’Neill, who visited from April 15-May 15, 2005. Dr. O’Neill is Director of Theater, Lafayette College, Easton, Pa. A prolific director, he has also written for The Theatre Journal, Renascence, and The Eugene O’Neill Review.
A graduate of Fordham University, he received his PhD from Purdue University, where his dissertation was: The Evolution of Form in Contemporary Drama.
He is currently writing a book on the Irish character that was created in Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, and its shadow on subsequent Irish drama, including the works of Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, Eugene O’Neill, Brian Friel and Martin McDonagh.
While at Tao House, O’Neill conducted research and writing, directed plays for the foundation’s Playwrights’ Theatre, and lectured at Rakestraw Books in Danville. His comments on his experience at Tao House are included in the September 2005 Eugene O’Neill Foundation newsletter.
<back to top>
Playwrights' Theatre
Purchase Playwrights Theatre Production Tickets Online Now Just choose the production you'd like to see and click "Pay Now" to advance to the secure PalPal payment pages. Names will be placed on a list that will be checked when you arrive at the Museum of the San Ramon Valley in Danville to board the vans to Tao House. You will be given your departure times either by mail--or phone if ordered at last minute. |
From ‘Little House’ to Tao House
TV Star Will Perform in Playwrights’ Series that Includes Works by Eugene O’Neill, New Play
Actress Karen Grassle, who starred in the TV hit series “Little House on the Prairie,” will be at a bigger house in May -- Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House estate in Danville. where she will be appearing in the 2008 Playwrights’ Theatre series.
The series will include staged readings of O’Neill’s rarely-produced “Welded”and “Blood Mirage,” a new work, will highlight the series in the Old Barn at Tao House.
“Blood Mirage,” by San Francisco actor, director, producer and playwright Jeffrey Hartgraves, will open the series on May 4 along with “Revelations,” a series of scenes from O’Neill plays in which women are the principal characters and in which Grassle will be featured.
“Welded,” about a successful playwright and his wife, will be performed on May 18.
Performances on both dates will begin at 3 p.m. in the Old Barn at Tao House.
Tickets at $25 for each show are on sale at the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in Danville (925) 820-1818 as well as online via Pay Pal.
Tickets include transportation to Tao House. Private vehicles are not allowed. The transportation schedule will be provided at time of ticket purchase.
Although she achieved fame as Caroline Ingalls, co-star Michael Landon’s ranch wife in the “Little House series that began in 1974, Grassle is no stranger to the stage. She made her Broadway debut in 1968 in “The Gingham Dog” and appeared over the years with regional and touring companies in such hits as “Driving Miss Daisy.”
Grassle is a native of Berkeley, where she was born in 1944.
Mike Ward, artistic associate at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, will direct “Blood Mirage”. Ward describes “Blood Mirage” as a story of three adult sisters who are called together by their aging mother to attend the funeral of her sister, their aunt. The mother decides that certain truths must be revealed before t is too late. The daughters find that their lives are altered through a shift in nothing more or less potent than perspectives.
Ward returns to Tao House after last year’s successful presentation of Adam Sandel’s “This is Not My Life.”
“Welded” will be directed by Josy Miller, artistic director of the new Hapgood Theatre in Antioch. The play was written by O’Neill in 1922-23, and performed the following year at the Thirty-Ninth Street Theatre in New York. Although it did not enjoy a successful run, it is an example of O’Neill’s early attempts to explore the nature of married love. He sought to convey the inner conflicts of the individual spouses and reveal the spiritual dimension of the marriage bond.
The play’s protagonists, a successful playwright and his actress wife, bear striking resemblances to O’Neill and his second wife, Agnes Boulton, a writer whose career, in the early years of their marriage, rivaled his.
In the play, O’Neill challenges the couple to remove the masks which they have been wearing in the marriage. Unable to do so, each of them seeks comfort in another relationship—she with a family friend, he with a prostitute. It is in their reunion, in the final act of the play, that O’Neill introduces the notion of a spiritual love, a sacrament, which demands a surrender of their egocentric selves, one, which transcends yet bonds them forever.
While he was drafting the play, he wrote in Theatre Arts magazine: “I feel that I’m getting back as far as it is possible in modern times to get back, to the religious in the theatre. The only way we can get religion back is through an exultation over the truth, through an exultant acceptance of life.”
The Playwrights’ Theatre, now in its 13th season, is a program of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation in partnership with the National Park Service, which maintains Tao House as a National Historic Site. The theatre features new works as well as those by O’Neill or by playwrights who were influenced by the legendary dramatist.
About Playwrights' Theatre
In 1996, the Eugene O'Neill foundation initiated the Playwrights’ Theatre, a series of staged readings of plays in the Old Barn at Tao House. Prominent Bay Area directors and actors take part. The name of the series honors O’Neill’s Playwrights’ Theatre, formed in 1916 in New York City by the Provincetown Players who committed themselves to fostering American playwrights.
Festival
Join us in Danville for the ninth annual Eugene O’Neill Festival
September 19-21, 2008
-
Performances in the Old Barn at Tao House of All God's Chillun Got Wings, a 1924 play by Eugene O'Neill. Paul Robeson performed in the premiere. He portrayed the black husband of an abusive white woman who, resenting her husband's skin color, destroys his promising career as a lawyer. Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. on September 19 and 3 p.m. on September 20
- A screening in the Town Hall of The Emperor Jones, the 1933 movie starring Paul Robeson adapted from O’Neill’s play of the same name. Office. 8 p.m., September 19 in the Town Hall.
• An elaborate exhibit of memorabilia, photos, and documents relating to the career of Paul Robeson. The exhibit was initially unveiled on April 9, 2008 in the Oakland City Hall by the Robeson Centennial Committee on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the performer’s birthday. The exhibit is planned for the Danville Library or alternate site, September 19-21.
• A seminar led by O’Neill and Robeson scholars on the “O’Neill/Robeson Connection.”10 a.m. Saturday, September 20, in the Town Hall.
• Free tours of Tao House.
• Walking tour of Danville.
[Program of events subject to change]
The Eugene O’Neill Festival is sponsored by the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House, in partnership with the National Park Service.
Help Your Organization Learn More About O’Neill – and the O’Neill Foundation
As part of its goal of perpetuating the life and works of Eugene O’Neill, the foundation helps spread the word through a corps of knowledgeable speakers. They’re available to speak to your organization or at informal gatherings. Their topics include the life and times of O’Neill and the activities and programs of the foundation in association with the National Park Service. Talks can be tailored to satisfy the interests and time limits of your organization. To schedule a speaker, contact us at (925) 820-1818 or via e-mail at taohouse@eugeneoneill.org.
Past O'Neill Foundation Events
Since its founding, the foundation has sponsored special educational and artistic events. A West Coast Theater Directors Conference was held in preparation for the O’Neill Centennial celebrated in 1988. The conference brought together directors from Seattle to Los Angeles. Jose Quintero and Jason Robards participated. Other centennial activities included performances in Danville and culminated in a Birthday Party on October 16, 1988 in San Francisco. The party was a cooperative venture with the American Conservatory Theater and brought together scenes from several O’Neill plays.
In 1994 the Foundation sponsored a three-day international conference, O’Neill on World Stages, focusing on the theatrical vitality of O’Neill’s writing. The conference had three components: the delivery of research papers; a performance by both a Russian and Chinese troupe of Long Day’s Journey into Night; and a visit to Tao House. The conference was organized in association with the National Park Service and St. Mary’s College. The Bay-Area O’Neill Scholars Consortium was formed in 1998 to bring O’Neill scholars together to sponsor seminars and conferences and review new books relating to O’Neill.
O’Neill Seminars are held on an occasional basis. The first was offered in 1996, and two of the most successful were in October 2001, based on A Moon for the Misbegotten, and another as part of the 2004 O’Neill Festival.
AWARDS AND HONORS
THE TAO HOUSE AWARD
This award is
given to a person who, in the opinion of the board, has served the
American Theater with distinction. The recipient may be actively
involved in performance areas, including acting, directing, design
or producing and may also be a critic or scholar who has written
significantly about the theater in the United States. The first
Tao House Award was presented to Jason Robards Jr. on November 12,
1989. A longtime supporter of the foundation, Robards was instrumental
in the success of the foundation’s first benefit performance.
UC Professor
emeritus Travis Bogard, foundation artistic director, board, O’Neill
author, editor and scholar received the award in October 1993. At
the International Conference in June 1994, Dr. Donald Gallup became
the third recipient of the award. In his many years as curator of
the American Literature collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library at Yale University, Dr. Gallup made a “permanent
contribution to the American theater.”
Arthur and Barbara Gelb, authors of a biography of O’Neill,
received the fourth Tao House Award in April 1996.
In 1999 Producer Director Theodore Mann who has produced 16 plays and 2 recording of O’Neill works was presented with the award. This was followed in 2003 when Paul Libin, Broadway producer and collaborator with Mann, was honored, and in January, 2006, when the award was presented to Stephen Black, author and authority on O’Neill. A special presentation of the award was made in November 2006 to Cherry Jones, who is regarded as the finest stage actress of her generation.
Another award
for 2006 was presented in January 2007 to Edward Hastings, a founding
member of the American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.), the Tony Award
winning regional theater company in San Francisco.
THE OPEN GATE AWARD
This award honors those who have served as directors of the foundation
and whose dedication and service have enhanced the memory of Eugene
O’Neill.
It was first
presented in 1991 to Thalia Brewer, co-founder of the Eugene O’Neill
National Monument Association, which was organized to wage the campaign
that saved Tao House from destruction. The association eventually
became the Eugene O’Neill Foundation. In 1992 Darlene Blair
and Lois Sizoo. also founders of the association, were honored.
Subsequent honorees include Craig Dorman, 1993, Ruth Turner, 1995;
Frances Chumley, 1998; Linda Best, 2003; Virginia Denison, 2004;
Wendy Cooper, 2006.
THE ARTISTIC AWARD
The Artistic Award (The Genie) is given to individuals who have
been outstanding in their commitment to the Foundation’s mission
to provide artistic and educational programs, which focus on the
contribution of Eugene O’Neill to the American theater. Past
recipients are Kerri Shawn and Richard James (2003) ), well known
actors who have assisted the foundation in Student Days and other
foundation programs; and Michael Uppendal (2006), artistic director
of the Namaste Theatre Company based in Los Angeles. His company
performed O’Neill’s sea plays and “Hughie”
in the Old Barn at Tao House.
THE FREEMAN AWARD
This award is named for Herbert Freeman. He served as chauffeur
and “man of all work and friend. He is credited with helping
to make life more comfortable for the O’Neills at Tao House.
This award is presented to volunteers who have tirelessly given
their time and talents to the Eugene O’Neill Foundation.
Past recipients include Tony Cooper (2003), who has photographed
and videotaped foundation events and added content to the foundation’s
online research library; J.R.K. Kantor (2004), who worked on the
foundation library and served as a docent at Tao House; Glenn Fuller
(2005), former National Park Service superintendent with responsibilities
for Tao House; and Michael Cook (2006), for 30 years a Bay Area
theatrical designer, writer, actor and director, who also teaches
at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga. He has assisted with productions
at Tao House.
LOIS SIZOO ENDOWMENT FUND
In 2001 an endowment fund was established to honor the memory of
Lois Sizoo, founding member of the foundation. This fund is the
repository for all memorial gifts to the foundation. This fund will
support the work of new playwrights.
O’NEILL COMMEMORATIVE
IN DANVILLE
In 2004 the Board of Directors and the Town of Danville approved
the installation of an O’Neill Commemorative in Front Street
Park, Danville. This public art installation celebrates O’Neill’s
life in Danville and his plays, the last six of which were written
at Tao House, that earned him recognition as the playwright who
reshaped American theater. Formal unveiling and dedication of the
commemorative took place on Wednesday, September 28, 2005. View
an interactive tour of the commemorative...
