Author Archives: Martha Carpentier

Susan Glaspell in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

The International Susan Glaspell Society was formed in 2003 with the stated mission of “broadening the recognition of Susan Glaspell as a major American dramatist and fiction writer though production of high-quality scholarship and critical analyses of all her works, participation in national and international conferences, performances, and public readings of her plays, and the commitment to reprinting and teaching her plays, stories, and novels.” Since then many conference panels have been presented nationally and internationally, many performances and readings of Glaspell’s plays have been staged, and many ground-breaking books have been published by a core group of dedicated Susan Glaspell and Provincetown Players scholars. This new collection, Susan Glaspell in Context, released by Cambridge University Press in July 2023, represents the culmination of these 20-years of scholarly excellence and commitment.

Edited and inspired by J. Ellen Gainor, author of Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture, and Politics 1915-48, and co-editor with Linda Ben-Zvi of The Complete Plays, this collection provides new, accessible, and informative essays by all of the leading international scholars and artists about Susan Glaspell’s life, career development, writing, and ongoing global creative impact. The collection features wide-ranging discussions of Glaspell’s fiction, plays, and non-fiction in historical and contemporary critical contexts, including sections on Glaspell’s early Midwestern background, her place as a woman in American journalism, her involvement in the Chicago Renaissance as well as Bohemian Greenwich Village, her roles in the Provincetown Players and the Little Theater Movement, and her signal contributions to Modernism both fictional and dramatic. The volume also includes the first analyses of six previously unknown Glaspell short stories, as well as interviews with contemporary stage and film artists who have produced Glaspell’s works or adapted them for audiences worldwide. Organized around key locations, influences, and phases in Glaspell’s career, as well as core methodological and pedagogical approaches to her work, the collection’s thirty-one essays place Glaspell in historical, geographical, political, cultural, and creative contexts of value to students, scholars, teachers, and artists alike.

Many heartfelt thanks to Ellen from all of us at ISGS for her leadership and indefatigable commitment to our mission.

ISBN 9781108767309

To order: Susan Glaspell in Context (cambridge.org)

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New information RE: Washington Square Players and Glaspell:

“Washington Square Players Present Bill of Novelties” Christian Science Monitor 15 November 1916, p. 11. (no author listed). The quite detailed review of this production of Trifles covers the play as part of the Second Bill of their Third Season (1916-17).

Also see the dissertation on the Washington Square Players by Eugene M. Wank: “The Washington Square Players: Experiment Toward Professionalism” Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Oregon, 1973.

What is interesting here is the information about the company’s presentation of multiple works by Glaspell—not only Trifles, but also Suppressed Desires in 1918 (why did they change their mind about this??), and Close the Book (1918). Trifles, moreover, was revived as part of a “Special Suffrage Week” bill sponsored by the Woman’s Suffrage Party, beginning March 12, 1917.

The Wank dissertation draws considerably on archival materials related to core members of the group, especially Edward Goodman’s (husband of Lucy Huffaker) files in the NY Public Library, but it’s not clear if the archival materials provide anything on Glaspell.

—J. Ellen Gainor

Rosas en la arena. Los relatos de Susan Glaspell (Universitat de València, 2022)

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Former ISGS President Noelia Hernando-Real (right) with current President Emeline Jouve (left)

Presenting another important contribution to establishing Susan Glaspell’s reputation among readers and scholars in Spain by former ISGS President Noelia Hernando-Real. This volume is the first lengthy introduction of Susan Glaspell and her fiction to Spanish readership. The first part of the book places Glaspell’s short fiction within its context and places the author as a remarkable contributor to U.S. short story tradition. The second part of the book, which includes the translation into Spanish of eight of her more than seventy short stories, exemplifies Glaspell’s numerous stylistic and thematic choices and how her short fiction, as her drama, challenges social, political, and artistic rules.

Tradicional y modernista, costumbrista y arriesgada, complaciente y feminista, la obra de ficción de Susan Glaspell no se ajusta a patrones sencillos. Ganadora de un Premio Pulitzer de teatro, adalid de la vanguardia teatral en Estados Unidos, escritora de novelas de reconocido prestigio, hasta hoy sus relatos siguen siendo el secreto mejor guardado de la literatura norteamericana. Este volumen presenta, por primera vez en castellano, la faceta más desconocida de la autora, su narrativa breve, con la traducción de ocho de sus más de setenta relatos, en los que se revela su variedad estilística y temática y que sitúan a Glaspell en un lugar preeminente de la imponente tradición de la narrativa breve estadounidense, a la que contribuye con arriesgadas propuestas sociales, políticas y artísticas.

https://puv.uv.es/libro/rosas-en-la-arena-los-relatos-de-susan-glaspell.html

Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players (University of Alabama Press, 2022)

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Jeffery Kennedy began his career as a protégé of the great O’Neill biographers, Arthur and Barbara Gelb. Over the years he has collected the most comprehensive personal archive of Provincetown Players documents and photographs, as well traveling around the country and becoming deeply familiar with every academic and public archive. He is also the greatest raconteur of the Provincetown legends and stories, known and unknown, as well as an accomplished academic and theatre professional in his own right. Therefore his book, the first contemporary and comprehensive history of the Provincetown Players since Robert Sarlos 1982 Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players, has been long and eagerly awaited.

In Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players, Jeffery Kennedy tells the unabridged story of the innovative theatre group, from their roots in colonial American traditions to the tragic division of the O’Neill and Cook factions in 1924. In a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative drawing on many new sources that have only become available in the last three decades, Kennedy modifies, refutes, and enhances previous studies, while shining new light at every turn on the history of the Provincetown Players.

Kennedy has placed a re-evaluation of George Cram Cook at the center of his study, tracing Cook’s mission of “cultural patriotism,” which drove him toward creating a uniquely American identity in theatre. Kennedy also provides many detailed narratives of the originating Provincetowners, adding significantly to the biographical record of the Players’ forty-seven playwrights, including Susan Glaspell, Neith Boyce, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Floyd Dell, Rita Wellman, Mike Gold, Djuna Barnes, and John Reed. Kennedy also examines other important artistic, literary, and political figures who influenced the Players, including Emma Goldman, Charles Demuth, Berenice Abbott, Sophie Treadwell, Theodore Dreiser, Claudette Colbert, and Charlie Chaplin. Finally, Kennedy re-evaluates the contribution of Eugene O’Neill to the Provincetown Players, and the company’s contribution to his development.

In the words of O’Neill’s most recent biographer, Rob Dowling: “Jeffery Kennedy’s Staging America, a major event for theatre studies worldwide, is a magisterial chronical of George Cram Cook’s leadership of the Provincetown Players—‘a little theater group’ orchestrated by the uniquely inspiring Cook, a Midwestern dreamer who was, without question, directly responsible for the birth of modern American drama.”

Jeff at the Provincetown Players Wharf site leading a tour during the 2015 centennial celebration.

Three Midwestern Playwrights: How Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell Transformed American Theatre (Indiana University Press, 2022)

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Marcia Noe’s impressive career as a Glaspell scholar began in 1983 with her publication of the first modern biography of Susan Glaspell, Susan Glaspell: Voice from the Heartland (Western Illinois University Press). Over the intervening years Noe contributed many feminist and formalist analyses of Glaspell’s plays, often illuminating their context in Midwestern culture. This body of work is now crowned with her publication of Three Midwestern Playwrights: How Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell Transformed American Theatre, which tells a part of the Provincetown story that has not yet been told.

In this book Noe argues that the progressive social, political, and cultural activities in which Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell were involved in early twentieth-century Davenport, Iowa, informed not only the plays that they wrote but also the aesthetic and theatre practice of the Provincetown Players (1915-1922), the theatre company that contributed significantly to the foundation of modern American drama. The philosophical and political orientations of Dell, Cook, and Glaspell, fostered in their Midwestern hometown, helped to create a theatre practice marked by experimentalism, collaboration, leftist cultural critique, rebellion, liberation, and community engagement.

This book situates the origin of the Provincetown aesthetic in Davenport, Iowa, a Mississippi River town in which a large German population provided a particularly fertile cultural environment, including a Socialist local in which Dell and Cook were active. In addition to their political activities, Noe establishes that Dell’s work as reporter and editor for The Tri-City Workers Magazine, Dell’s and Cook’s leadership in the Monist Society, and Cook and Glaspell’s role in the Davenport censorship controversy were reflected in the plays that they wrote for the Provincetown Players. She discusses how all three writers were able to see that radical politics sometimes begets radical chic and shows how, consequently, several of their plays satirize the faddish elements of the progressive political, social, and cultural movements in which they were active.

Although the Provincetown Players was located on the East Coast, several of Dell’s, Cook’s, and Glaspell’s plays were set in their native Midwest. Noe’s new book tells the story of how Dell, Cook, and Glaspell effected a marriage between early twentieth-century Midwestern radicalism and East Coast avant-garde theatre practice, a marriage that resulted in a fresh and energetic contribution to American theatre.

The Plea: The True Story of Young Wesley Elkins and His Struggle for Redemption (University of Iowa Press, 2022)

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With this new book in the Iowa and the Midwest Experience series, Patricia L. Bryan and Thomas Wolf add to their already indispensable legal/historical work relevant to Glaspell’s oeuvre, which began with Midnight Assassin: A Murder in America’s Heartland (Chapel Hill, 2005), their exhaustive study of the Margaret Hossack case upon which Glaspell based Trifles / “A Jury of Her Peers”. The Plea: The True Story of Young Wesley Elkins and His Struggle for Redemption tells the story of 11-year-old Wesley’s crime in Iowa in 1889—the murder of his abusive father and stepmother—and his incarceration as a child in an adult prison. During the next twelve years, he educated himself, argued eloquently for his release, and won the support of prison wardens, educators, newspaper editors, and politicians. For Bryan and Wolf, it is a story of heroic perseverance and an exploration of the social, political, and legal systems of the era.

Bryan and Wolf’s research continues to be an invaluable resource for Glaspell scholars. As a young reporter, Glaspell took an interest in youthful offenders, covering the Mitchellville Girls School riot of 1899 and, four years later, she wrote “In the Face of His Constituents,” based on the case of Wesley Elkins. When Glaspell included the story in her 1912 collection, Lifted Masks, she retitled it “The Plea.” In this book, Bryan and Wolf devote part of a chapter to Glaspell’s reporting on the Mitchellville riot, and a full chapter to her fictional portrayal of the legislative debate over Wesley’s release from prison.

“The Plea is not just an impeccable piece of historical scholarship, but a gripping work of narrative nonfiction. Devoid of any taint of sensationalism, the book vividly reconstructs the fascinating, long-forgotten case of an eleven-year-old committing parricide, the boy’s long struggle to rehabilitate himself, and his ultimate redemption. An immensely readable and thought-provoking book—one with particular relevance in our own age of increasing juvenile homicides—it will captivate both American history buffs and fans of true crime.”—Harold Schechter, author

The Plea: The True Story of Young Wesley Elkins and His Struggle for Redemption (Iowa and the Midwest Experience): Bryan, Patricia L., Wolf, Thomas: 9781609388393: Amazon.com: Books

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

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“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”

6th International Conference on American Drama and Theatre, Madrid, 1-3 June 2022

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The 6th International Conference on American Drama and Theatre was hosted by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and co-sponsored by the Spanish universities of Cádiz and Sevilla and the University of Lorraine in France, working in partnership with the American Theater and Drama Society (ATDS), the International Susan Glaspell Society, the Arthur Miller Society, the Eugene O’Neill Society, and RADAC (Recherches sur les arts dramatiques anglophones contemporains). The Conference topic was “‘Game Over!’: U.S. Drama and Theater and the End(s) of an American Idea(l)” and was dedicated to the study of ends and new beginnings, games and gaming, players and playing, especially during, but not limited to, the coronavirus pandemic.

ISGS member Linda Ben-Zvi (Professor Emeritae, Colorado State University and Tel-Aviv University) was included as one of five eminent keynote speakers. The ISGS held its biannual Society Business Meeting at this conference. In attendance in Madrid were Noelia Hernando-Real, Nieves Alberola Crespo, Linda Ben-Zvi, Basia Ozieblo, Alex Roe, Drew Eisenhauer, and Emeline Jouve. In attendance online were Ellen Gainor, Jeff Kennedy, and Martha Carpentier. See the minutes in post below

Four papers were presented by ISGS members:
Emeline Jouve (University of Toulouse), “Susan Glaspell and the Provincetown Players: From Ideas to Ideals”
Nieves Alberola Crespo (Universitat Jaume I), “The Poetics of Loss and Grief in Susan Glaspell’s The Outside”
Drew Eisenhauer (University of Le Havre, Normadie), “Glaspell: Bending (Breaking?) Genres on the Air and in Hollywood)
Alex Roe (Artistic Director, Metropolitan Playhouse), “Virtual Players: The Metropolitan Players Response to the 2020-21 Pandemic”

Current President Emeline Jouve gives outgoing President Noelia Hernando-Real a gift showing the gratitude and appreciation of the members for her wonderful years of service.

The ISGS presented a staged reading of Glaspell’s moving one-act play, “The Outside,” directed by Alex Roe, ISGS member and Artistic Director of the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York City.

ISGS members Barbara Ozieblo, Drew Eisenhauer, Dorothy Chansky, Noelia Hernando-Real and Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz read Glaspell’s The Outside, directed by Alex Roe (standing)

Drew Eisenhauer and son Louis en route to the conference.

Drew and Louis enjoying the conference

2022 International Susan Glaspell Society Business Meeting Minutes

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1. President’s report

The Business Meeting took place at the June 2022 American Drama and Theatre Conference at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and online. In attendance in Madrid: Noelia Hernando-Real, Nieves Alberola Crespo, Linda Ben-Zvi, Basia Ozieblo, Alex Roe, Drew Eisenhauer, Emeline Jouve
In attendance online: Ellen Gainor, Jeff Kennedy, Martha Carpentier

A. Acknowledgement
Thank you to Noelia Hernando-Real for her organization of the 6th International Conference on American Drama and Theater and for having arranged the logistics for this meeting.
Thanks to Noelia Hernando-Real as past president of the ISGS and to Cheryl Black as past EC members.
Thanks to Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and Jeff Kennedy for volunteering to join the Executive Committee.
Thanks to Judy Barlow for once again supervising the recent ISGS election process which resulted in the election or re-election of Emeline Jouve as President, Martha Carpentier as Vice President, Drew Eisenhauer as Membership and Finance Officer.

The president reported on the large number of activities engaged in by society members on behalf of the art and legacy of Susan Glaspell.

B. Partnerships + Panels organized by the ISGS
Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939): context & enjeux, Toulouse Jean-Jaurès University (France), Oct. 2019.The ISGS was a financial partner and presented a Provincetown panel.

Sixth International American Theatre and Drama conference, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), June, 2022. The ISGS was a financial partner and presented a Provincetown panel as well as hosted a reception.

Eleventh International Conference on Eugene O’Neill, Suffolk University (USA), July 2022. The ISGS was a financial partner and presented a Provincetown panel as well as contributing to a wine and cheese event.

C. Conferences papers or post-show discussions presented

CONFERENCE PAPERS
Alberola Crespo, Nieves. “Susan Glaspell y los Provincetown Players”, El humor y el espectáculo en la sociedad actual, Universitat Jaume I de Castelló. Spain. Campus de Castelló, Castellón (Spain), 7 March 2022.
Alberola Crespo, Nieves. “Itinerarios emocionales en la obra de Susan Glaspell (1915-1918),”
Emociones y humor en la sociedad actual, Sagunto, Universitat Jaume I (Spain), 13 May 2022.

Eisenhauer, Drew, “Glaspell: Bending (Breaking) Genres on the Air and in Hollywood,” 6th International Conference on American Drama and Theater, MIRAFLORES DE LA SIERRA (Spain), 1 June 2022.

Hernando Real, Noelia. “The Provincetown Players and the Federal Theatre: The Essay Susan Glaspell Never Wrote.” International Federal Theatre Conference. University of Toulouse- Jean Jaurés (France), 17th October 2019.

Jouve, Emeline. Pour une herméneutique de l’insignifiant : interprétation et émancipation dans Trifles (1916) de Susan Glaspell. Gest lecture, CLIMAS Research Group, Bordeaux Montaigne University, 10th December 2021.

POST-SHOW PANELS/DISCUSSIONS
Friedam, S. The Outside, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online, 06/02/2021- 10/02/2021
Kennedy, J. “Trifles, a Feminist Drama,” Newberry Library, virtual presentation with Susan Glaspell scholar Martha Carpentier, May 13, 2021. Followed presentations with question and answer session moderated by Liesl Olsen.
Kennedy, J. “Performing the Heart of the Nation: The Provincetown Playhouse,” Greenwich Village Preservation Society, virtual presentation, April 12, 2021. Followed presentation with question and answer session moderated by Ariel Kates.
Ben-Zvi, .L. Trifles, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online Reading, 08/05/2021 – 12/05/2021

D. Publications
BOOKS
Gainor, J. Ellen, (ed). Literature in Context: Susan Glaspell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Fall 2022.

Hernando-Real, Noelia. Rosas en la arena. Los relatos de Susan Glaspell. Valencia: Publicaciones Universitat de Vàlencia, 2022.

Kennedy, Jeffery. Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players. University of Alabama Press, Fall 2022.

Noe, Marcia. Three Midwestern Playwrights: How Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell Transformed American Theatre. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2022.

ARTICLES
Cox, James H., and Alexander Pettit. “Indigeneity and Immigration in Susan Glaspell’s
Inheritors.” Comparative Drama, vol. 53, no. 3, 2019, pp. 31‒58.

Hernando-Real, Noelia. “Susan Glaspell.” Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature. Ed. Jackson Bryer. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Hernando-Real, Noelia. “Suicide Across the Waves: On the Feminist Possibilities of Dramatic Suicide in Plays by Susan Glaspell, Marsha Norman and Naomi Wallace.” Suicide in Modern Literature Social Causes, Existential Reasons, and Prevention Strategies. Ed. Josefa Ros Velasco. Springer, 2021.

Hernando-Real, Noelia. “On the Page and on the Stage: The Influence of H. D. Thoreau on Susan Glaspell’s Works”. “To live deep and suck all the marrow of life.” The Legacy of Henry David Thoreau. Eds. Eulalia Piñero and Laura Arce. Delaware: Vernon Press, 2020. 25-38.

Hernando-Real, Noelia. “How to Teach Susan Glaspell’s Trifles.” How to Teach a Play: Exercises for the College Classroom. Eds. Miriam Chirico and Kelly Younger. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. 139-141.

Jouve, Emeline. « ‘Murderous Hug’: 1922 et la tragédie des Provincetown Players, » in 1922 et son esprit, Elise Brault-Dreux (ed.), Paris : Sorbonne Université Presses, 2022.

E. Productions
Alex Roe, Producer, Suppressed Desires, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online Reading, 16/05/2020 – 20/05/2020
Alex Roe, Producer and Director, The People, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online Reading, 18/07/2020 – 22/07/2020
Alex Roe, Producer, Woman’s Honor, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online Reading, 26/09/2020 – 30/09/2020
Alex Roe, Producer, The Outside, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online Reading, 06/02/2021- 10/02/2021
Alex Roe, Producer, Trifles, Metropolitan (Virtual) Playhouse, Online Reading, 08/05/2021 – 12/05/2021

Burch Milbre, Sometimes I Sing (inspired by Susan Glaspell’s Trifles), Live 2021 United Solo Theatre Festival, 10/21/21.

Pléyade Trampantojo Players, El honor de una mujer, Susan Glaspell (Woman´s Honor by Susan Glaspell), Teatro Raval, Castellón (Spain), 30/04/2022-1/05/2022.

F. Facebook
ISGS FB page was launched in January 2015. Emeline is the FB “webmaster”: she has been updating the page for the past years with feeds about performances and news from the society: members are invited to share with her info/news they would like to advertise on FB
= Total Page followers: 297

2. Vice President and Finance and Membership Officer Report
We have been working for over a year trying to organize our membership renewal process, bank account, and PayPal account in order to make funds available internationally for receipt as well as payout. It has not been easy but we do finally have a workable system:

A. Bank account:
Since previous Membership and Finance Officer Doug Powers established it, our bank account is with M&T Bank, which is an East Coast US bank with branches in various states. We have removed Doug and now Drew is the only person on the account. However, it is a business account and as CEO, Drew created an employee account for Martha to give her access to everything in case he were to be incapacitated. However, to get Martha or anyone else legally on the account, Drew must physically meet the person at any M&T branch. Drew and Martha continue to hope they will be able to make this happen someday soon. In the meantime, we regard the M&T account as the ISGS “savings account”. But in general, PayPal is our active online account for receipt of dues and payout of funds in the U.S. and internationally.

B. Paypal:
We had many difficulties trying to set up an international business account in Paypal for ISGS, particularly one that would directly receive membership dues from the ISGS web site. Dues payment links from the ISGS web site now go directly into this account and we can pay out from this account, both in Europe and in the U.S.

C. Non-profit status:
We have verified that we are set up in the U.S. as an incorporated non-profit society. Martha has the official IRS confirmation letter.

D. Membership
Updated membership list: After a long membership renewal drive, which included repeated appeals to the group as well as to individual members, our membership is now at 30, with 5 honorary members among those. Eleven long-term members are as yet unrenewed. It has been decided that we will reach out for them as If anyone would like to reach out personally to any on this list, please do so. we would be sorry to lose these friends.

Lifetime Members: In addition to our first Lifetime Member, J. Ellen Gainor, we welcome three new Lifetime Members: Marcia Noe, Carol DeBoer Langworthy, and Milbre Burch. Thank you!

E. Website:
With Martha’s retirement from Seton Hall University, which hosts the ISGS web site, we were worried that we might have to purchase a provider and create a new site. However, good news is that Seton Hall will continue to host this site. Martha urges members to send her information to update the website.

F. Emendations to By-Laws

Article VII: Grants and Awards, Section 2 were discussed. Noelia argued that keeping the awards for best published paper and best conference paper would be in the best interests of the Society and everyone agreed. However, Martha suggested removing the word “biannual” from the current By-Law. Others felt it should stay and a proposal to emend as “The Society will review submissions to award biannual prizes. . .” was made. It was agreed that the language of this By-Law will be revised by Emeline and Martha and submitted via email for voting.
Emendations to Article VII: Grants and Awards, Section 3 (translations awards) were discussed. Ellen proposed changing the language from “prize” to “subvention”. There was general agreement to this idea, but Noelia proposed revising the language of the whole section and it was agreed that Ellen, Noelia, and Emeline will draft a revision of this By-Law and submit via email for voting.

All of these By-Laws revisions must be voted on first by the EC and if approved, submitted to the Membership for voting. Then the By-Laws must be updated accordingly on the website.
Revisions accepted after on-line votes (June, 28th, 2022)

G. Future Plans:
Discussion about our continuing collaboration with the Eugene O’Neill Society: Emeline announced that she had conferred with current President of EONS Katie Johnson. It was proposed and agreed that presidents of sister drama societies should be made honorary members of each other’s societies for the duration of their presidencies. How this would be implemented was not discussed however we decided to start with the E. O’Neill Society.

Under the topic of working together with other dramatists societies, Martha reminded everyone and Basia agreed that in previous years we had formed the “Five Dramatists Society” with the EONS, Thornton Wilder Society, and Edward Albee Society, but this never went anywhere. Should we revive this joint venture for future panel and conference proposals? The venue was discussed. Although previously the Five Dramatists Society had taken place at ALA, Jeff suggested that it had been difficult to get Alfred Bendixen (President of ALA) to cooperate on joint panel times, etc. He suggested that CDC might be a better venue for future joint plans. It was agreed that Emeline would reach out to the other society presidents and get their input about going forward with the “Five Dramatists Society” idea and which venue would be best.

Emeline discussed the December 2023 ISGS 20-year anniversary celebration. While Oxford may still be a possibility, Emeline is willing to host the event in Toulouse: two events could be hosted. Possibly we could use the event in Toulouse as a way to draw the other Five Dramatists Societies into a joint relationship. Specifics of this event were not discussed but need to be. Also, we neglected to discuss the stalled special Glaspell issue of the Eugene O’Neill Review.

Ellen announced that her upcoming panel, “Glaspell Panel Provincetown Players,” at the EONS conference at Suffolk University, Boston, will feature three speakers, including Drew Eisenhauer and Marcia Noe, but they need a third paper. ISGS will present a reading of the one-act Glaspell wrote for the centenary of landing on Plymouth Rock and roundtable a discussion of Ellen’s book featuring contributors. Drew might present from his chapter of new research on Glaspell.
Emeline suggested we develop on a flyer to hand-out at conferences. Martha has flyers from the past that she will update and send to Ellen and Emie and Jeff for revision/approval.

2019 Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939): context & enjeux, Toulouse Jean-Jaurès University

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ISGS VP Emeline Jouve (front center) with conference co-organizer Geraldine Prévôt (Paris-Nanterre Université); ISGS President Noelia Hernando-Real and members Linda Ben-Zvi (second row), Jeffery Kennedy and Drew Eisenhauer (third row)

In October 2019, the ISGS co-sponsored, along with the American Theatre and Drama Society, a Conference on the Federal Theatre Project in France at Toulouse Université Jean Jaurès.

The International Susan Glaspell Society was excited to sponsor a panel on the role Susan Glaspell and her fellow members of the Provincetown Players had in the development of the Federal Theatre Project. While the Federal Theatre Project stands as an original adventure in the history of American theatre and drama, it is also true that former theatrical experiments led the way to its creation. The achievements of the Provincetown Players, created with the main goal of finding – and encouraging – new American plays, reverberated in Hallie Flanagan’s theatrical plan for the Federal Theatre project in the 1930s. Indeed, this is why, as Glaspell biographers have noted, Susan Glaspell accepted the role of Chair of the Midwestern Bureau from September 1936 to April 1938. She saw in the Federal Theatre Project the chance to continue, renew, and improve what she felt was Jig Cook’s, and her own, theatrical dream and legacy.

The ISGS Panel featured papers by

Noelia Hernando-Real (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid): “The Provincetown Players and the Federal Theatre: The Essay Susan Glaspell Never Wrote”
Linda Ben-Zvi (Professor Emerita Tel Aviv University): “A Pioneering Playwright for a Pioneering Job: Susan Glaspell, Spirochete, and the Midwest Bureau of the Federal Theatre Project”
Drew Eisenhauer (Université de Strasbourg): “Alfred Kreymborg: Federal Troubador”

Following the panel, the ISGS hosted a convivial cocktail hour.