On June 26 The Provincetown Fringe Festival hosted the Susan Glaspell Play-Reading Marathon, where Glaspell scholars had the chance to meet and celebrate Glaspell’s dramatic oeuvre.
Many thanks to Artistic Director Marjorie Conn and Director Karen Maloney for providing this wonderful opportunity for theatre professionals and academic scholars to get together in Glaspell’s beloved Provincetown to read, hear, and discuss Glaspell’s plays. Starting at 12:00 noon we read Trifles and Alison’s House. After a dinner break we returned to read The Outside and The Verge. The event took place at The Provincetown Inn, right on the tip of Cape Cod, very appropriately the actual locus of The Outside. It was, indeed, a marathon, and an exhilarating experience to hear and participate in these
living, moving works.
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- Provincetown Fringe Director Karen Maloney and SGS director Cheryl Black
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- SGS member Sharon Friedman enjoys the readings
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- Alison’s House-J. Ellen Gainor reading the patriarch John Stanhope
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- Cheryl Black reads Claire in The Verge
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- Susan Meyer, Glaspell’s goddaughter and namesake, converses with J. Ellen Gainor
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- Kristina Hinz-Bode survives reading Tom in The Verge
Visiting Susan’s home at 564 Commercial Street, currently owned by Mr. & Mrs. William Teague, we found the sundial and thought of Susan posing for Jig’s graceful statues:
“I like to remember that winter in Provincetown. The wind would shake the little house on the sand, but we kept the fire bright in the big stove in the dining-room. Jig was modeling the four figures for his sun-dial. Dawn or the dreamer. She who faces the south Noon, the work of the world. Sunset work done, old age, the grave. And the North Star, the beyond-the-sun.” — Road to the Temple, 278.
Sun-dial photos courtesy of Bill Teague, current owner of Glaspell's house in Provincetown