Eugene O'Neill Foundation, Tao House

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.

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 below.

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.”

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.

Foundation Mourns Death of Honorary Member Deborah Kerr

The Eugene O’Neill Foundation mourned the death last Oct. 16 of one of its honorary members, the actress Deborah Kerr, whose film credits include “The King and I” and “From Here to Eternity.”

Kerr was elected an honorary member in 1979 when she was appearing in a play (“The Last of Mrs. Cheyney”) by Frederick Lonsdale) at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre.

In addition to her film work, she appeared in many plays, including O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1977 in Los Angeles. She played the role of Mary Tyrone.

Kerr, 86, died in Suffolk, England. She had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Although nominated six times for an Academy Award, she did not receive the coveted honor. However, in 1994, she was awarded an Oscar for her extensive body of work that included 40 films.

A hand-painted ornament with an illustration of playwright Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House in Danville was among other globes representing 391 National Park Service sites throughout the country that adorned an 18-foot Christmas tree in the elaborately decorated Blue Room of the White House last December.

Debby Koonce, a plein-air artist who is no stranger to the site, painted the Tao House ornament. She regularly holds classes at Tao House.

In addition to Tao House, the ornament included images of the Old Barn on the property and Blemie, O’Neill’s beloved Dalmatian.

Koonce was invited to the White House to see the tree and attend a reception hosted by First Lady Laura Bush. She and President Bush chose the 2007 theme, “Holiday in the National Parks,” to call attention to the centennial of the Park Service in 2016.

"It was a thrill to see the tree with all the ornaments and meet all the artists and see how they represented their park," said Koonce, a retired special education teacher who lives in Moraga.

Among the ornaments on the tree were those representing other local National Park sites in Contra Costa County– John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez and Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historic Park in Richmond

Two individuals involved in San Jose Repertory Company’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2007 earned “outstanding performances” awards from the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

Jonathan Moscone was honored for his work as director, while Lap-Chi Chu won an award for lighting design.

Representing print and electronic media, 21 members of the Critics Circle announced the winners of 36 drama awards and 31 musical awards from 243 nominated actors, designers, productions, and more reviewed in 2007. Over 400 productions were seen in 2007 by circle critics reviewing theatre from San Jose to Santa Rosa, San Francisco to Concord.

Two individuals with careers in education and theater—Mary Greco and Eric Hayes--have been elected to the board of the Eugene O’Neill Foundation.

Greco recently retired from the San Ramon Unified School District, where she
was active on many district committees. She attended summer programs for teaching the gifted at the University of Connecticut. She also attended sessions at Columbia University that focused on teaching literature and writing to elementary students.

Greco grew up in Alamo. She and her husband, Guy, have lived in the valley for nearly 35 years and are active in the Rotary Club and the Danville Chamber of Commerce. The couple has two daughters and five grandchildren, all of who attend local schools.

Hayes, a resident of Danville, is a member of Actors’ Equity, the labor union representing American actors and stage managers in the theatre. He is employed at Solano College, where he works with the youth theatre program. He works with the California Shakespeare Festival and its intermediate and high school teachers’ program.

Hayes also is involved with the New Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, where he teaches workshops for teens in acting, filmmaking and summer stock.

O’Neill’s Physician Recalls Dramatist’s Life at Tao House

The Eugene O’Neill Foundation library was the recipient last year of the text of an oral interview with Dr. Clifford Feiler, a civic leader and physician who treated Eugene O’Neill when the playwright and his wife lived at Tao House. The text was contributed by the Lafayette (California) Historical Society

Dr. Feiler set up practice in Lafayette in 1939 and was the town’s only medical doctor. He also mentions that at the time he was a member of “the foundation that has finally gotten the government to declare Tao House a historical monument. The state is now going to manage it. They are still in the process of figuring out what to do with it. How to get adequate access to it is a problem. They have a lot of pictures. The foundation has some pictures of me with O'Neill and there are also pictures of the house which is being restored. That society is very active and I believe it's a museum dedicated to O'Neill. “

Foundation Mourns Death of Honorary Member Deborah Kerr

O’Neill’s Physician Recalls Dramatist’s Life at Tao House