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Summer 1916 was actually the second season of theatricals for the group
of amateurs who became the Provincetown Players.
Their first season had also been in Provincetown, during the
summer of 1915. It was a
spontaneous beginning. On
July 15, at 10:00 in the evening, after the children had gone to bed,
the writers Neith Boyce and her husband Hutchins Hapgood amused their
friends with some theatricals staged on their summer veranda facing the
harbor. Neith Boyce’s
one-act play, Constancy, was
the first performed. It is
a spoof about the romance between Mabel Dodge, a wealthy socialite, and
John (Jack) Reed, poet, journalist, and future revolutionist.
All knew the plot beforehand, for the love affair was the talk of
Greenwich Village.
The
vacationing scenic designer Robert (Bobby) Edmond Jones arranged the
impromptu set. He simply moved abort some pillows and lamps to create a
set on the veranda; then he turned the audience about to face the living
room for the second play, Suppressed
Desires. This too was a
spoof—of Freudianism—by the newlyweds, novelist Susan Glaspell and
her writer husband, George (Jig) Cram Cook.
The group was delighted. Jig
thereupon arranged a second bill of two new one-act plays on Lewis
Wharf. Jig staged his own play, a satire about the feud between
current artistic schools in Change
Your Style; and he staged Contemporaries,
a parable about the homeless in New York City, the work of the young
writer Wilbur Daniel Steele.
After
the 1915 summer productions in Provincetown, the winter talk in
Greenwich Village switched from Maxism, free love, and Freudianism to
theater. It was Jig Cook
who spearheaded the efforts to create new drama, modeled after the
theater of ancient Greece. Jig
wanted the theater to be an artistic community: “True drama is born
only of one feeling animating all the members of a clan.”
Jack Reed was at first co-leader, and characteristically
enthusiastic; however, he was professionally overcommitted and
relinquished control to Jig Cook.
Those
who had taken part in the plays in Provincetown in 1915 formed a loose
vanguard directed toward a new American theater that would break free
from the hackneyed melodramas and frothy comedies on Broadway controlled
by commercial syndicates. Except
for Jack Reed and his play Moondown,
their attempts to get their own plays staged in New York by the newly
formed Washington Square Players had failed.
They envisioned a change toward psychological realism, as found
in the Abbey Players of the Irish theater.
Their dream materialized in Provincetown the following summer of
1916 with O’Neill and his Bound
East for Cardiff.
O’Neill’s
premiere was on the second bill of the 1916 season.
The first bill began two weeks earlier on July 14, 1916, and
consisted of three traditional one-act plays.
There was Winter’s Night by Neith Boyce Hapgood, a journalist and fiction
writer, in which she parodied her own marital conflicts.
Not Smart, a spoof of
both the Provincetown Portuguese and the bohemian attitude toward sex,
was by the otherwise serious, short-story journeyman Wilbur Daniel
Steele. (“Not smart” was a localism for getting pregnant.)
Freedom, a political
farce by John Reed, completed the bill.
Little is known of these premieres, so overshadowed were they by Bound
East. On the second
bill with Bound East were two other plays:
a reprise of Steele’s Not
Smart and a debut of The Game,
an allegorical drama by the journalist Louise Bryant.
Bound
East is a one-act play that reflects the seafaring experience of its
youthful, obsessively autobiographical author.
Its mood recaptured O'Neill’s dreary, homeward voyage to New
York from Buenos Aires on the Ikala,
a British tramp steamer. Eight
months earlier O’Neill had been ecstatic when he sailed from Boston on
the Charles Racine, a fetching
Norwegian windjammer. Eugene’s father, James O’Neill, a successful
actor and theatrical entrepreneur, had paid the $75 fare, hoping that
his dissolute younger son would profit from a sea adventure.
One in Buenos Aires Eugene reverted to his old habits of
excessive drinking and cavorting with derelicts and pariahs, as he had
in Manhattan. He slept in
flophouses and with the readily-available Brazilian prostitutes.
When his money ran out and his health failed, he signed on with
the freighter as a “scenery bum,” one who works his passage from
port to port.
O’Neill’s
original title for Bound East, written in 1914, was “Children of the Sea.”
It is a story about the fatalism and the helplessness of seamen.
The plot centers on Yank, who is dying from a shipboard accident
that crushed his chest. The
action is restricted to the cramped seamen’s quarters of the steamer Glencairn,
a “rusty lime-juicer,” as it lumbers eastward across the Atlantic in
fog and darkness. Shipmate
Driscoll mercifully stays with Yank, who is afraid to die alone.
“For God’s sake don’ leave me alone!”
The play begins with humorous, fantasized memories as Cocky, a
“weazened runt,” boasts to his shipmates about his love affair with
the “queen of the cannibal isles.”
Through his characters O’Neill relates his own waterfront days
in Buenos Aires. “D’yuh remember the times we’ve had in Buenos
Aires” I do that; and so
does the piany player. He’ll not be forgetting’ the black eye I gave
him in a hurry.” The mood
shifts to grim reality as Driscoll and Yank talk of their bittersweet
memories, centering on their disillusionment with the sea. “It must be great to stay on dry land all your life and
have a farm with a house of your own."” The play ends when death
comes as a "pretty lady dressed in black.”
O’Neill
directed Bound East with the
help of the professional actor Edward (Teddy) Ballantine, who took the
part of Cocky. Despite the
protests of the artists, who had constructed abstract, art deco sets for
other productions, O'Neill insisted on realistic scenery and props.
William Zorach, sculptor and painter, who with his wife
Marguerite designed memorable, cubist scenery for the group, complained
that O’Neill resisted his designs. “Gene insisted everything had to
be factual. If the play
called for a stove, it couldn’t be a paint box.”
Jig Cook, philosopher-turned-farmer, turned-writer,
turned-carpenter, supervised the props for this and most other sets.
For the wharf productions he designed a stage “in four sections
which could be picked up by hand and set at various levels and
angles.” Three bunks were
built along the far wall of the fishhouse adjacent to the sea; wooden
benches were placed in front of the bunks; portholes were painted on the
canvas behind the bunks; and a wooden pail and a hanging kerosene
lantern completed the arrangements.
Costumes were simple: the
all-male cast wore oilskins and walked around in their heavy woolen
socks.
The
premiere casting cannot be fully reconstructed.
Of the eleven characters, it is know that the part of Yank was
played by Jig Cook and that of Cocky by Teddy Ballantine.
There is some evidence that the actor Frederick Burt played
Driscoll. Journalist Jack
Reed, soon to be acclaimed for his first-hand coverage of the 1917
Russian Revolution, Ten Days That
Shook The World, and Wilbur Steele, soon to be recognized as one of
American’s leading short-story writers, most likely took minor acting
parts. True to the
group’s democratic spirit, writers, actors, and artists exchanged
roles and duties.
It is
well-established that O’Neill himself played The Second Mate, the
least demanding role. He
had one line, “Isn’t this your watch on deck, Driscoll?”
Although O’Neill was reportedly terrified about his role, he
nevertheless later bragged about his acting debut.
He chided the director of a later production that it might not
have been as good as the original “because I didn’t play the Mate,
what?” Furthermore, from
out-of-the-wings could be heard the drone of O’Neill's measured,
baritone voice, for he prompted the poorly rehearsed players throughout
the performance.
In the
summer of 1916 Provincetown was a crucible of creative activity,
seething with bohemians from Greenwich Village.
The summer colonization of Provincetown, which had begun slowly
in 1914—when World War I restricted travel to the artistic haunts of
Europe—peaked in 1916. Artists
were everywhere, painting on the streets, wharves, shacks, or exhibiting
in Town Hall and in the new Provincetown Art Museum.
Writers congregated on the beach and on the narrow sidewalks and
streets and talked about their assignments for popular magazines like Scribner’s
or revolutionary magazines like The
Masses, and in the usually quiet East End of town there was
concentrated activity as this energetic group of writers and artists
banded together to produce some experimental, amateur theatricals on
Lewis Wharf.
The
waiting audience that lingered on the wharf that foggy Thursday evening
to gossip and preen was excited about seeing O’Neill’s play.
News of the play’s tryout had spread quickly through the
close-knit summer colony. Almost everyone had some personal involvement
in these non-commercial play productions, either as creative artists,
theatrical aides, or subscribers. No
one god paid. The money was
raised only to cover production costs—scenery, lighting, seats,
curtain, and costumes.
The
most expensive production was less than $13.
Jig found the summer group to be ready subscribers.
For the 1916 summer, the first bill of three plays was priced at
fifty cents and sold out immediately.
For the next three bills, or nine plays, subscriptions were sold
for one dollar. No licenses
were required because admission was by prior subscription.
This was a way of avoiding licensing fees both in Provincetown
and New York.
One
can imagine the fascination of Provincetown residents and the summering
Bostonians as they watched the chattering bohemians gather on Lewis
Wharf before the performances. In
her signature outfit, a red cape over white linens, Louise Bryant
doubtlessly was ringed by male admirers.
Among her summer entourage were the avant-garde artists Charles
Demuth, with his black shirt and purple cummerbund, and Marsden Hartley,
wrapped in a flowing navy-blue coat accented with a gardenia
boutonniere. Also in attendance was Max Eastman, editor of the
controversial magazine, The Masses,
sporting his proletarian uniform of brown corduroy shirt and trousers.
Bryant was the season’s much-talked about beauty, with her
striking red hair, green eyes, and flawless complexion.
The prevailing rumor, later substantiated, was that Bryant was
romantically involved with O’Neill, even though she was virtually
engaged to Reed.
The
waiting bohemians were well-traveled cosmopolites. Jack Reed, tie-less
and tousled, was an internationally known war correspondent.
Demuth and Hatley were habitués of Gertrude Stein’s famed
Paris salon, as were the writers Neith Boyce and Hutchins Hapgood.
Also among Stein’s coterie were the smock-clad artists Ethel
Mars and Maud Squire, who had left America’s staid Midwest to enroll
in life classes in Parisian ateliers.
Artists Marguerite and William Zorach had traveled to Europe as
well as to the South Pacific to search out the haunts of the French
painter Paul Gauguin. In
1913 both Zorachs had exhibited at the landmark New York Armory Show, as
had Marsden Hartley.
One
way these Greenwich Village bohemians protested was in their manner of
dress. Women bobbed their
hair, removed their corsets, and wore loose garments; men wore open-neck
working-class shirts of flannel or corduroy and, if artists, wore smocks
and berets in the Continental fashion.
Purple was the season’s rage—in all its shades:
mauve, plum, lavender, and magenta.
It accented women’s make-up and dress and even men’s clothes.
There were the more conventionally attired, such as Mary O'Brien
and Susan Glaspell, who had bought Provincetown homes, just a little
“up-along” Commercial Street. They
were talked about in town, not for their clothes necessarily, but for
their wild parties, where women were seen to drink liquor and smoke
cigarettes.
While
theater history was being made on Lewis Wharf, what might have been the
random thoughts of those first-nighters?
Surely Mary O’Brien was reliving a deathwatch as she heard
Driscoll say his long goodbye to the dying Yank.
The previous Fall she had comforted her husband Joe as he lay
dying in a New York hospital. Although of a different sort, Max Eastman was rehearsing a
goodbye scene. That summer
he was planning to tell his wife, Ida Rauh, that he was leaving her for
another woman. Jig
Cook and Sue Glaspell recently had had their share of good-byes.
When they decided to marry, they were virtually exiled from their
native, conventional Iowa because of the notoriety attached to Jig’s
divorce. The seriously ill
Jack Reed was preoccupied with death; in a few weeks he was to undergo
major surgery to remove a diseased kidney.
There were others with less tragic thoughts, such as Louise
Bryant, who that night was awaiting her debut as a playwright.
She was thinking of that dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome and
mysterious O’Neill, her new love interest.
Neith
Boyce was no doubt concerned about her husband Hutchins and his
worrisome affair with Lucy Collier. That summer Lucy had taken a nearby cottage. While
waiting for his own play to be staged that night, Wilbur Steele was
annoyed with the valuable time these summer theatrics had taken away
from his professional writing. He
was especially worried about his minister father’s reaction to the
summer’s frivolity. For
many of the others, professional writers and artists, their thoughts
turned to their careers, to whether or not their future lay in the
theater. It is safe to say
that O’Neill alone was thinking of little else but his play. He had decided even before that night that the theater would
be his whole life.
Bound
East was a signal success. Susan
Glaspell vividly recalled the premiere in her memoir, The
Road to the Temple: “It is not merely figurative language to say
the old wharf shook with applause.”
Only days before, Bound
East had been enthusiastically selected by the democratic caucus of
bohemians. The play was
read by the actor Frederick Burt in Glaspell’s Provincetown parlor
while the taciturn, brooding O’Neill listened from the adjoining
dining room. Approval was
unanimous. Spontaneously
the assemblage rushed to congratulate their new playwright.
They knew immediately that O’Neill’s play was different; it
was the breakthrough they had hoped for.
Why
this instantaneous approval of O’Neill?
Most of the artists and writers were familiar with the leading
playwrights of Europe, such as Strindberg and Ibsen, whose work had
inspired O’Neill. O’Neill
had adopted the Europeans’ melancholy and introspective themes to
become America’s own apostle of woe.
Until O’Neill, no American dramatist had brought the new genre
to home shores. He was the
first to challenge the century’s materialism; the first to stage the
lower-class idiom and life on an American stage; and the first American
playwright to work solely as an artist.
Many of the innovative techniques that he later employed in his
major dramas—poetic use of light and sound, dialect, dramatic
narrative—had their beginnings in this germinal play, the one he
selected for his premiered. In
1922 after he had won a Pulitzer Price for Beyond the Horizon, O’Neill recounted that in the winter of 1913
and 194, he had written: “eight one-act plays, two long plays.
Of these Bound East for
Cardiff (was the) only one worth remembering.”
The
audience filed out more slowly and more somberly than they had entered,
for they had witnessed a magic moment, a turning point in theater
history.
All the memoirists in the audience, and there were many, talked
and wrote about O'Neill's première and that “remarkable summer” of
1916 in Provincetown.
Some turned to playwriting, others to directing or scenic design.
None but O’Neill lasted as a playwright.
In September, before they left Provincetown for subsequent
successful seasons in New York City, they became a formal group, the
Provincetown Players.
In one way or another the Players organization lasted over a
decade.
Their failure was due to their success—they eventually were
absorbed by the commercial theater they had revolted against.
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