11th International Conference on Eugene O’Neill at Suffolk University, Boston, MA USA, 6 – 9 July 2022

“Glaspell in Context” Roundtable, featuring from left to right: Drew Eisenhauer, Stuart Hecht, Ellen Gainor, Marcia Noe, Jeffery Kennedy

Once again the International Susan Glaspell Society and the Eugene O’Neill Society linked arms to celebrate the achievements of the mother and father of modern American drama, Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill, in the context of the Provincetown Players. The topic of the 2022 11th International Conference on Eugene O’Neill was “Longing and Belonging.”

The ISGS Panel was entitled “The Provincetown Players — Longing and Belonging in the Beloved Community,” chaired by  J. Ellen Gainor and featuring the following papers:

  • Marcia Noe (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), “Three Midwestern Playwrights: How Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell Transformed American Theatre”
  • Drew Eisenhauer (University of Le Havre, Normandy), “Longing for Democracy – Beyond the Other Players: Alfred Kreymborg and the Commonplace”
  • Jeffery Kennedy (Arizona State University), “’As Bright a Wit and as Fertile a Fancy’: New Discoveries and Thoughts on Susan Glaspell”

The ISGS also presented a Roundtable: Glaspell in Context, Chaired by J. Ellen Gainor and featuring the following discussants:  Drew Eisenhauer, University of Le Havre, Normandy; Stuart
Hecht, Boston College; J. Ellen Gainor, Cornell University; Jeffery Kennedy, Arizona State University. This was followed by a reception co-sponsored by the Eugene O’Neill Society,
the Susan Glaspell Society, and Penn State University Press.

Stuart Hecht and Ellen Gainor

Marcia Noe and Jeffery Kennedy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the ISGS presented a staged reading of Glaspell’s recently discovered short allegorical play, Free Laughter, published for the first time in Susan Glaspell the Complete Plays, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi and J. Ellen Gainor (McFarland, 2010). Written in 1919 about the same time as Glaspell’s three-act masterpiece, Inheritors, Free Laughter represents Glaspell’s parody of the repressive political and social climate that became known as the Red Scare; both plays critique the era’s suppression of free speech, xenophobia, and jingoism embodied by the popular rubric of the time, “100 percent American.” The reading was directed by Stuart Hecht (Boston College) and featured the following cast:

Emily Ranii as “Native Born” with Anne Fletcher as “Executor”

Drew Eisenhauer as “Foreign Born”
Anne Fletcher as “Executor”
Ellen Gainor as “Spirit of Laughter”
Jeff Kennedy as “Trend of the Times”
Marcia Noe as “Patriot”
Emily Ranii as “Native Born”

 

 

Marcia Noe as “Patriot”

 

Drew Eisenhauer as “Foreign Born”

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