5th International Conference on American Drama and Theater, Nancy, France, June 2018

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ISGS Panels: Susan Glaspell and her Sisters from the Provincetown Players: Migrating beyond Forms and Places, I & II

Chaired by Emeline Jouve, INU Champollion/Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès

Acclaimed by drama and theater scholars for their artistic and political significance, the Provincetown Players have been acknowledged as “one of the first theater companies in America in which women achieved prominence in every area of operation.” This amateur company brought together women who greatly participated in the shaping of a Bohemian culture: Mary Heaton Vorse, Ida Rauh, Susan Glaspell, Neith Boyce, Marguerite Zorach, Louise Bryant, Djuna Barnes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, to name only a few, were iconoclastic figures who pushed the frontiers of conventional American lifestyle and art. This panel presented papers on the mostly neglected “Sisters of the Provincetown Players” in accord with the conference topic, as migrants, highlighting the ability of these artists to physically and metaphorically cross borders. Travelling the world, the women from the Provincetown Players were inspired by their lives as expatriates. The sense of re-location and dis-location was infused into their writing which dealt thematically with the notion of migration or which played with this notion by incorporating formal displacements. Sharon Friedman and Jeffery Kennedy presented on geographical border-crossing in Susan Glaspell’s, Rita Wellman’s and Djuna Barnes’s plays by considering the “Europeanness” of some of their American plays. Special attention was given to the migration of forms with Marie-Pierre Maechling analyzing Susan Glaspell’s shift from drama to the short-story in her adaptation of Trifles, and Drew Eisenhauer examining how Zelda Fitzgerald and Djuna Barnes incorporated theatricality into their novels.

“Emotions on the Move in Susan Glaspell’s One-Act Plays (1915–1917),” Nieves Alberola Crespo, Universitat Jaume I de Castelló

“Who’s ‘100% American’? Staging Susan Glaspell’s Inheritors in the 21st Century as a Critique of Nativist Fervor in a Nation of (Im)migrants,” Milbre Burch, Independent Scholar

“Susan Glaspell’s Hybrid Theatre: European Modes and Motifs in The Verge,” Sharon Friedman, Gallatin School of New York University

“‘The delicate tracery of Paris and the high terraces of Lyon’: Zelda Fitzgerald, Djuna Barnes: les Flâneuses Américaines,” Drew Eisenhauer, Paris College of Art

“Journeying Past the Village: Provincetown Player Women Playwrights Whose Plays Extended Beyond American Borders,” Jeffery Kennedy, Arizona State University

Tenth International Conference on Eugene O’Neill, Galway Ireland, July 2017

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ISGS Panel: The Women of the Provincetown Players and the Abbey Theatre

Chaired by Drew Eisenhauer, Paris College of Art

9:45-11:00 Session 3a:

· Linda Ben-Zvi, Tel Aviv University, “‘A Different Kind of the Same Thing’: Echoes of Synge and the Abbey Theatre Style in Glaspell’s Early One-Act Provincetown Plays”

· Marla Del Collins, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, “The Verge: To Grow or Die; Irishness and the Forces Unleashed”

· Drew Eisenhauer, Paris College of Art,”An Irish Triangle: Transatlantic Comedies of Manners in Djuna Barnes’s An Irish Triangle, Louise Bryant’s From Paris to Main Street, and Susan Glaspell’s Woman’s Honor”

ISGS at SSAWW in Bordeaux, France, 2017

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The International Susan Glaspell Society joined the Society for the Study of American Women Writers at Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France, 5-8 July 2017, for their conference, “Border Crossings: Translation, Migration, & Gender in the Americas, the Transatlantic, & the Transpacific,” directed by Stéphanie Durrans. The ISGS panel was chaired by ISGS VP Emeline Jouve and entitled “Beyond Borders: Susan Glaspell and her Sisters from the Provincetown Players” featuring:

• “From Page to Stage and Stage to Page: the Trans-literary Career of Susan Glaspell,” Cheryl Black, University of Missouri
• “Recruits in the ‘Army of Women’: Mary Heaton Vorse and Susan Glaspell,” Sharon Friedman, NYU Gallatin School
• “Mud and the Water: Transcultural Explorations of Transgressive gender. Louise Bryant’s From Paris to Main Street and Djuna Barnes’s Three from the Earth,” Drew Eisenhauer, Paris College of Art
• “Paradigm of the ‘outside’ among the Provincetown Players, especially Susan Glaspell and Marguerite Zorach: from myth to history?” Géraldine Prévot, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, France
• “Susan and Neith Abroad,” Carol DeBoer-Langworthy, Brown University, USA

On the evening of 5 July 2017, ISGS presented a concert reading of Susan Glaspell’s 1929 novel Fugitive’s Return, adapted and directed by Cheryl Black, 4:00-6:00 pm at the Maison des Etudiants, featuring Cheryl Black, University of Missouri; Dorothy Chansky, Texas Tech University; Jonathan Cohen, Stony Brook University; Drew Eisenhauer, Paris College of Art; Anne Fletcher, Southern Illinois University; Emeline Jouve, INU Champolion/Université Toulouse Jean Jaures; Valerie Joyce, Villanova University; and Ralph Poole, University of Salzburg.

Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion (University of Iowa Press, 2017)

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“In Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion, Emeline Jouve has cleared away what Lawrence Langer once called Glaspell’s ‘old lace’ to reveal the ‘steel lining beneath the tender surface’—the politics and, really, outrage at injustice and belief in democratic idealism that are at the center of Glaspell’s dramaturgy—and her raison d’être as a writer.” — Drew Eisenhauer, Coventry University

A pioneer of American modern drama and founding member of the Provincetown Players, Susan Glaspell (1876–1948) wrote plays of a kind that Robert Brustein defines as a “drama of revolt,” an expression of the dramatists’ discontent with the prevailing social, political, and artistic order. Her works display her determination to put an end to the alienating norms that, in her eyes and those of her bohemian peers, were stifling American society. This determination both to denounce infringements on individual rights and to reform American life through the theatre shapes the political dimension of her drama of revolt.

Analyzing plays from the early Trifles (1916) through Springs Eternal (1943) and the undated, incomplete Wings, author Emeline Jouve illustrates the way that Glaspell’s dramas addressed issues of sexism, the impact of World War I on American values, and the relationship between individuals and their communities, among other concerns. Jouve argues that Glaspell turns the playhouse into a courthouse, putting the hypocrisy of American democracy on trial. In staging rebels fighting for their rights in fictional worlds that reflect her audience’s extradiegetic reality, she explores the strategies available to individuals to free themselves from oppression. Her works envisage a better future for both her fictive insurgents and her spectators, whom she encourages to consider which modes of revolt are appropriate and effective for improving the society they live in. The playwright defines social reform in terms of collaboration, which she views as an alternative to the dominant, alienating social and political structures. Not simply accusing but proposing solutions in her plays, she wrote dramas that enacted a positive revolt.

A must for students of Glaspell and her contemporaries, as well as scholars of American theatre and literature of the first half of the twentieth century.

https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/

$65 or Sale Price $48 with promo code jouv17
9781609385088

“Trifles at 100” at the Metropolitan Playhouse and Modern Drama Seminars, 2016

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(l. to r.) J. Ellen Gainor, Barbara Ozieblo, Noelia Hernando-Real, Cheryl Black, Emeline Jouve and Sharon Friedman answer audience questions at the Metropolitan “Trifles at 100” concert reading.

A professional concert reading of Trifles was presented on October 4, 2016, at the Metropolitan Playhouse, 220 East 4th St., New York City, organized by AD Alex Roe and ISGS members Sharon Friedman and J. Ellen Gainor, to celebrate the centennial of Trifles.  ISGS members participated in a post-reading discussion at this moving tribute to Glaspell’s most iconic play.

On October 16, 2016, a Modern Drama Seminar on Susan Glaspell and the Provincetown Players was held at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with keynote speakers Basia Ozieblo, Emeline Jouve and Linda Ben-Zvi. The Seminar included an exhibit at the Humanities Library: “Susan Glaspell, pionera del teatro experimental.” Another special Seminar was held in Toulouse, France on invisible violence in Trifles with keynote by guest of honor Noelia Hernando-Real. The Seminar was organized by Emeline Jouve & Céline Nogueira at Toulouse University (France).

2016 Business Meeting Minutes

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Gallatin School, NYU, New York City, 4 October 2017, 4.30 pm

 In attendance: Cheryl Black, Martha Carpentier, Marla Del Collins, J. Ellen Gainor, Noelia Hernando-Real (President), Ling Jiane, Emeline Jouve (Vice-President), Barbara Ozieblo

Noelia Hernando-Real thanked Sharon Friedman for getting the Society a room in which to hold the meeting. She then thanked Sharon and J. Ellen Gainor for organizing the post-reading panel at the Metropolitan Playhouse; she thanked Judith Barlow for supervising the election process and Doug Powers for his work as Membership and Treasure officer over the past six years; and she thanked Martha Carpentier for her work as vice-president and president over the past twelve years.  Noelia offered Martha a gift in recognition of her contributions on behalf of the society.

Conferences and post-show panels/discussions:  Noelia listed all the events in which the Society has been involved since the last Business meeting:

  • August 2013 (ATHE). Session: “Playing with Feminism: Susan Glaspell’s Woman’s Honor as Social Satire of the Sexual Double Standard” (Reading of Woman’s Honor too). Introduction by Barbara Ozieblo, J. Ellen Gainor and Heidi Schmidt. Reading (Cheryl Black, Basia Ozieblo, Ellen Gainor);
  • October 2013: World premiere of Springs Eternal at the Orange Tree. Seminar on the Provincetown Players, Glaspell and the theme of war, organized by Noelia Hernando Real. Speakers: Linda Ben-Zvi, J. Ellen Gainor, Barbara Ozieblo, Cheryl Black, Emeline Jouve, Drew Eisenhauer, Sherry Engle, and Noelia Hernando-Real;
  • April 2014: First International Conference of the French Modernist Society with ISGS sponsored panel featuring Emeline Jouve, Eisenhauer, Jeff Kennedy, Beth Wynstra, Noelia Hernando-Real;
  • October 2014: Susan Glaspell at her alma mater, Drake University, in Davenport Iowa: ISGS members read “Performing Bohemia” and conducted a post-show discussion featuring Jeff Kennedy, Cheryl Black, Martha Carpentier, Barbara Ozieblo, and Noelia Hernando-Real. ISGS members and Drake University faculty met and dined with Dean Schroll, who had originally contacted Martha to organize the event. Drake University named their annual reading series, which Schroll sponsors, in honor of Glaspell: “The Susan Glaspell Writers and Critics Series”;
  • February 2015: “L’Acte Inqualifiable ou le Meurtre au Féminine” or “Unspeakable Acts: Murders by Women,” a conference co-organized by Emeline Jouve at l’Université Toulouse Jean-Juarès. Martha Carpentier was invited to present “Women’s Justice: Nemesis and Subversion in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles”;
  • March 2015: Sharon Friedman presented on Susan Glaspell for the panel “Visions of Tragedy in American Theatre” at the 39th Comparative Drama Conference, held at Stevenson University in Baltimore, Maryland, chaired and organized by David Palmer;
  • July 2015: Provincetown centennial celebration co-organized by the ISGS (Martha Carpentier and Noelia Hernando-Real) and Jeffrey Kennedy from the Eugene O’Neill Society. Thirty people participated at the celebration, which consisted of panels (12 participants), historical tours and performances. The attendees came from the US and Europe. The ISGS and the IEOS organized the events in collaboration with the Provincetown Library, Provincetown Museum and Provincetown Theatre. Tony Kushner participated in a post-show discussion with Linda Ben-Zvi and Jeff Kennedy;
  • September 2015: “Hour by Hour Susan Glaspell” at the American Bard Theater Company with discussion by Linda Ben-Zvi;
  • November 2015, Alison’s House performed at the Metropolitan Playhouse followed by talk-back by Linda Ben-Zvi;
  • November 2015: The Verge performed at the Provincetown Theatre with a panel organized by Linda Ben-Zvi.

The society members stressed the profusion of events and the interconnection between the academic world and the world of culture (theatre venues, museums, etc.) at large. Events are taking place both in the US and in Europe, which shows the international nature of the society.

Publications:

  • Martha C. Carpentier and Emeline Jouve (eds): On Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and “A Jury of her Peers”: Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations (McFarland);
  • Martha Carpentier, Barbara Ozieblo, Noelia Hernando-Real, Michael Winetsky published chapters in the anthology derived from the 2008 Delphi conference organized by Stockton College: Americans and the Experience of Delphi (2013, eds. Paul Lorenz and David Roessel);
  • Noelia Hernando-Real: Voces Contra La Mediocridad: La Vanguardia Teatral De Los Provincetown Players, 1915-1922, the first history of the Provincetown Players written in Spanish, and which also includes the translation into Spanish of eight plays, including Inheritors and The Verge;
  • Emeline Jouve, Aurélie Guillain, Laurence Talairach-Vielmas (eds.), Unspeakable Acts : Murders by Women (McFarland); includes essay by Martha Carpentier, “Women’s Justice: Nemesis and Subversion in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles”;
  • Other works featuring chapters on Susan Glaspell’s work include: Nina Tessler, Flowers and Towers: Politics of Identity in the Art of the American “New Woman”;Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett; Emeline Jouve: “Du presque-rien au presque-tout : le dévoilement de l’invisible dans Trifles (1916) de Susan Glaspell.”
  • Recent entries for the Literary Encyclopedia include:
    • Campagna, Vanessa Marie. “Bernice: A Play in Three Acts”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 July 2015;
    • Winetsky, Michael. “Judd Rankin’s Daughter”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 August 2014;
    • Engle, Sherry. “The Comic Artist: A Play in Three Acts”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 September 2013;
    • Burch, Milbre Elizabeth. “Author Chronology for Susan Keating Glaspell”. The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 April 2013.

Literary Encyclopedia entries on Glaspell’s works that remain to be written:

Noelia stressed the importance to go on with the entries and asked for volunteers to write the remaining entries. List of the entries that are left: Her America, Lifted Masks, The Road to the Temple, Cherished and Shared of All, Free Laughter. Novels: Ambrose Holt, Norma Ashe, Morning is Near Us, The Visioning. Ellen suggested asking Linda Ben-Zvi to do The Road to the Temple; Cheryl agreed to do Ambrose Holt; Martha volunteered to do Norma Ashe and Morning is Near Us, while Drew offered to do Lifted Masks. Noelia suggested involving graduate students in the writing of entries.

Ariel’s Corner:  Emeline Jouve introduced Ariel’s Corner, which is a specific section of the ejournal Miranda, hosted by l’Université Toulouse Jean-Juarès. Emeline is the editor of the theatre articles published in Ariel’s Corner. The aim is not to publish “conventional scholarly articles” but rather interviews, reviews, essays on theatre.  Emeline explained that she tries to promote Glaspell’s work; for this reason she sent a call for contributions through the list last year. Thus far Ariel’s Corner features two contributions on Glaspell and Emeline called for new contributions on Glaspell or the Provincetown Players:

  • Denise Doherty Pappas who attended the production of The Verge of the Provincetown Theatre wrote a review which was published in April;
  • Noelia Hernando-Real’s interview of the founders of the ISGS, Barbara Ozieblo and Martha Carpentier.

Theses:  Congratulations to Rasha Gazzaz who finished her thesis,  “Suppressed Voices: Women and Class in the Fiction of Susan Glaspell” at the University of Leicester (not a live link, copy and paste into your browser):  https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/36234/1/2015GAZZAZRPhd.pdf)

Awards:  Noelia announced that no one submitted articles for the biannual best published paper, best conference paper, or best translation awards. One of the reasons may be that the members actively publishing are involved in Society governance and there is a conflict of interest.  Solutions to solve the problem were considered: Martha Carpentier suggested reaching out to the contributors to publications related to Glaspell or the Provincetown Players, also encouraging graduate students. Barbara Ozieblo believed that more publicity should be made, but Noelia reminded the members that the awards were advertised through ATDS and on Facebook. Sharon Friedman suggested carrying the awards over, which was seconded and approved.

 Membership:  Noelia listed 56 current members (4 honorary); however, of these 37 have renewed membership and paid dues, and 15 have not paid although she sent personal mails to those who forgot to renew. Martha noted that a core of 40 members has been fairly consistent over the years and is a good number. Members discussed dropping out the people who did not pay their renewals, but eventually decided to keep them on the list.

Facebook/Blog:  Emeline introduced the FB page, launched in January 2015, for which she is the webmaster. Most of the people reached are in the USA (156 in Oct, 2016) and in France (108 – which may be explained by the fact that Emeline is the webmaster). Emeline posts all the news from the Society and encourages members to send her information to post. She invited the members who have not “friended” the page to do so and Martha urged the members to reach out to their friends. Ling Jian suggested reaching out to her students. FB is a means to reach younger people. Martha is still in charge of the blog, which is hosted by Seton Hall University. She explained that FB is a good supplement to the blog to get the latest news.

Discussion on how to foster research on Glaspell and the involvement of young scholars:  Noelia pinpointed the difficulties of getting new or young scholars into the field of Glaspell studies. Ellen Gainor reminded us that MLA has a public series called “Approaches to Teaching,” which she believes would welcome a volume on Glaspell’s works.  Although the process of proposing and editing these volumes is a difficult one, Ellen thinks that it is a good idea to go through with it as it would be a good way of getting new people.  Martha also suggested that we become a sub-group of the MLA—once you are affiliated, you automatically get a panel at every annual MLA conference, which would gives us high visibility and attract new members.

Treasurer’s report:  Noelia reminded us that the ISGS membership and bank balances are healthy, but there have been some delays in transferring control over the funds and membership list to Drew Eisenhauer, the new membership and finances officer, particularly since he lives in France. Drew Eisenhauer and Doug Powers sent the President their report and she read it:  The Paypal account has a balance of $1840-less expenses for the Trifles Celebration (including gift); the bank account balance is $3739.44; there are 55 members listed on the roster, with 14 listed as unpaid and in need of renewal.

Drew would like to ask if core members would consider automatic renewal. The members present considered it a good option, although some pointed out that some people won’t like the idea. Drew will look into this option, as well as coming up with ways to transfer control of the funds to him, including the possibility of banking through Paypal.

National Women’s Hall of Fame:  Noelia announced that our nomination of Glaspell again did not make the cut for the National Women’s Hall of Fame, even though a lengthy application spearheaded by Ellen and prepared by Ellen, Martha, Cheryl, Barbara, and Noelia was again submitted. The application failed for the second time. Noelia will ask for some explanation. The members agreed that the Society should try to apply again.

Future ISGS plans:

  • Madrid (Autonoma University), Oct 2016, International theatre seminar: “The Politics of Theatre. Susan Glaspell and the Creation of US Modern Drama” (organizer: Noelia Hernando-Real);
  • Toulouse (Jean-Jaurès University), March 2016, American Theatre Project Lab: “(In)Visible Violence: Trifles by Susan Glaspell”;
  • Bordeaux (Bordeaux University), SSAWW conference: Roundtable and reading of Fugitive’s Return;
  • Galway, EONS Conference: Drew Eisenhauer’s panel on the women of the Provincetown Players.

Noelia asked members for their opinion on what should be done next, whether the Society should attend ALA in 2017 or wait until 2018. The members decided to check where the conferences will be next year (east or west coast) and then decide whether to apply. The question of the commitment with the “Five Drama Societies” at ALA was also raised and the members decided that continuance of this alliance should be investigated. Martha commented that since the governance is now in Europe, more events should be organized in Europe and American Glaspellians will find ways to attend.

Future publications include Emeline Jouve, Susan Glaspell’s Poetics and Politics of Rebellion (University of Iowa Press); Drew Eisenhauer and Jeff Kennedy’s anthology on the Provincetown Players; and Judith Barlow on women in O’Neill for the Eugene O’Neill Review.

Next Business Meeting:  Noelia proposed possible venues where the next ISGS business meeting could be held: Bordeaux in July 2017 seems a good option; Galway also in July 2017 was mentioned. No conclusions were drawn, so the Executive Council will decide where to meet again, depending on potential attendance.

On Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and “A Jury of Her Peers”: Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations (McFarland, 2015)

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Trifles Centennial McFarland On Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and “A Jury of Her Peers”: Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations celebrates the 2016 centennial of Trifles and “A Jury of Her Peers” with a selection of all new essays featuring an international roster of contributors. Edited by Martha C. Carpentier and Emeline Jouve, the collection joins academic scholarship with theatre practitioner interviews and two original creative works inspired by Glaspell’s iconic works.

In the summer of 1915 on a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the summer gathering place of Greenwich Village artists and writers, Susan Glaspell was inspired by memories of the sensational Hossack murder trial she covered as a young reporter in Des Moines to write Trifles – her play about two women who discover and hide a Midwestern farm wife’s motive for murdering her abusive husband. Following successful productions of her plays by the innovative little theatre she helped to found, the Provincetown Players, Glaspell, already a well-received fiction writer, was transformed into the mother of American drama. In addition, her story version, “A Jury of Her Peers,” reached an unprecedented one million readers in 1917 through multiple publications. Since then, both have been repeatedly anthologized, taught in high school, college, and law school classrooms across America, and read around the world. Trifles is regularly revived on stages big and small from New York’s Public Theatre to London’s Orange Tree Theatre, to Ontario’s Shaw Festival, to China’s National Symposium on American Drama and Theatre.

CONTENTS:
Martha C. Carpentier and Emeline Jouve, “Introduction: An Iconic Work at 100 Years”

Part I: SCHOLARS’ VOICES

Catherine Q. Forsa, “Forensic Science and the Aesthetics of Affect in ‘A Jury of Her Peers’”

Marie-Pierre Maechling-Mounié, “Seeing, Looking, Pointing: A Linguistic Reading of Trifles and ‘A Jury of her Peers’”

Ilka Saal and Mareike Dolata, “Susan Glaspell’s Radicalization of Women’s Crime Fiction: Female Reading Strategies from Anna Katharine Green to Sara Paretsky”

Linda Ben-Zvi, “Silent Partners: The ‘Trifling’ Nature of Language in the Theatre of Susan Glaspell and Samuel Beckett”

Noelia Hernando-Real, “Powerful Gazes: The Right to Look in Film Adaptations of Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’”

Drew Eisenhauer, “Susan Glaspell’s Gendered Detectives in Trifles and a ‘Jury of Her Peers’: Suspense and the Threat to Masculine Identity in Radio and Screen Adaptations from 1930 to 1961”

Part II: PRACTITIONERS’ VOICES

Interviews
Sharon Friedman, “Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’ on Film: Interview with Filmmakers Sally Heckel and Pamela Gaye Walker”

Barbara Ozieblo, “Producing Susan Glaspell’s Plays: Interview with Founders of the Orange Tree Theatre, Sam Walters and Auriol Smith”

Barbara Ozieblo, “Trifles in Production at the Orange Tree Theatre, 2008: Interview with Director Helen Leblique

Adaptations / Creations
Milbre Burch, “Sometimes I Sing: Freeing the Voice of Minnie Wright in Trifles” and Sometimes I Sing

John G. Bilotta and John F. McGrew. “Creating an Opera Libretto from Trifles” and John F. McGrew, Trifles: Libretto

ISBN 978-1476662114
To order: http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-1-4766-6211-4

(Cover illustration by Emily Cooper)

Provincetown Players Centennial 2015

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EONS6 July 9-12, 2015 in Provincetown, MA, a centennial conference sponsored jointly by the Eugene O’Neill Society and the International Susan Glaspell Society returned to the scene where Glaspell’s and O’Neill’s first plays were read on the wharf in Provincetown on July 15, 1915. This four-day celebration included walking tours, performances at the Provincetown Theatre, roundtables, a gala reception, fish-house punch, and more! Roundtables included: “Intertextualities in Works by Women Playwrights of the Provincetown Players,” chaired by Martha C. Carpentier; “Jig, Susan, and Gene: The Triumvirate that Shaped the Provincetown Players,” chaired by Linda Ben-Zvi, plus a wonderful guided walking tour hosted by O’Neill Society President, Jeffrey Kennedy.

Schedule of Events:

Friday, July 10 — AM: A walking tour of Provincetown and the east end P’town Players’ sites, followed by “Women Playwrights of the Provincetown” roundtable. PM: Celebration of the first night of Players’ readings, with fish-house punch, on the beach!

Saturday, July 11 — AM: Tour of P’town Museum, followed by “Jig, Susan, and Gene” roundtable at the P’town Library. PM: Performances of Supressed Desires, Constancy, Trifles, and The Sniper at the Provincetown Theatre (ticket costs included at great discount in conference fee!), followed by a panel with Robert M. Dowling, Linda Ben-Zvi, and Jeff Kennedy, moderated by Susan Rand Brown. Gala reception to conclude festivities!

Sunday, July 12 — AM: Conference ended with a brunch that honored our two societies and all that our members have accomplished, followed by a book talk by Robert M. Dowling, author of the new biography, O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts, recently chosen by the Los Angeles Times as Book Prize finalist.

It took us a long time including midnight rambling, but we finally found Susan.

It took a long time, but we finally found Susan.

Jeff at the Wharf site.

Jeff at the Wharf site.

From left to right: Rob Dowling, Martha Carpentier, Jeff Kennedy, Emeline Jouve, Drew Eisenhauer, and Carol DeBoer-Langworthy

From left to right: Rob Dowling, Martha Carpentier, Jeff Kennedy, Emeline Jouve, Drew Eisenhauer, and Carol DeBoer-Langworthy

French Society of Modernist Studies Inaugural Conference 2014

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eiffeltower“‘My Beloved Community’: The Provincetown Players and Modernist Drama in the United States” is the title of the panel presented by ISGS members at the inaugural international conference of the French Society of Modernist Studies, entitled Modernist Communities, on April 25-26, 2014, at the University of the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. Emeline Jouve (Toulouse 2) chairs the panel which features the following papers:

Jeff Kennedy (Arizona State University): “George Cram Cook’s ‘Beloved Community of Life-Givers’: The Provincetown Players as Communal Experiment”

Drew Eisenhauer (Meaux): “Modernism, Expressionism, and the Avant-Garde: The Provincetown Players and the Birth of Formal Experimentation in the American Theatre”

Beth Wynstra (Babson College): “‘I Must Be a Mere Protective Animal’: The Modern Marriage in the Works of the Provincetown Players”

Noelia Hernando-Real (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid): “The First World War in Europe and in America: War Plays by Women Modernist Playwrights of the Provincetown Players”

The aim of this two-day conference is to foster discussion on communities in the modernist period as discursive constructs and historical practices. More than a decade after the landmark work of Jessica Berman (who is to deliver one of the keynote addresses) on “the politics of community” in modernist fiction, this conference explores the various ways in which communities were configured across genres and artistic media, while acknowledging the grounds of their historical and cultural specificity. By presenting far-ranging approaches to the concepts, forms, and historical practices of community, the goal of this conference is to map out the plurality of this phenomenon, while recording its persisting elusiveness. One of the premiere modernist communities, the Provincetown Players of course had to be represented and the joint members of the International Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill Societies rose to the challenge.

With this conference the French Society of Modernist Studies — Société d’Etudes Modernistes — hopes to bring together scholars from all countries and strengthen collaborations between French and international researchers. We also hope this event marks the beginning of continuing collaboration between our groups. Congratulations to our panel presenters and chair for representing us so well.