(51) American Drama: Major Trends from E. O’Neill to the 1930s.

(E. O’Neill, C. Odetts, M. Anderson, T. Wilder, and L. Hellmann).

 

A m e r i c a n  D r a m a

[See "Background for Topic 51..."]

 

E u g e n e  O ’ N e i l l  ( 1 8 8 8 – 1 9 5 3 )

L i f e :

- b. in an Ir. immigrant family

- his father: an extremely successful actor

- his mother: a morphine addict, hated backstage life, though loved her husband

- his older brother James: an actor and alcoholic

- toured each y., lived in hotels, and spent summers in their CT home

- suspended from a college for drinking and rebellious behaviour

- the next 5 y. ‘just drifted’, drank, and spent most time among the homeless, criminals, radicals, artists, and seamen > his early plays

- half a y. spent in a hospital with TBC, started serious reading of drama (H. Ibsen, Gr. tragedy, etc.), and enrolled as a special student at the Harvard drama workshop

- became the leading member of 2 avant-garde theatre groups, incl. the ‘Provincetown Players’ (1915), and laid foundations for the modern Little Theatre Movement

W o r k :

- despised the pop. Victorian theatre repres. by his father, decided to transform the Am. stage, and to create a new dramatic style

- produced a drama of voice and atmosphere rather than plot: an excellent ear for the vernacular, gift for evoking a powerful atmosphere, and ability to make each play an experience of extraordinary intensity

- the nation’s 1^st major playwright, the 1^st to explore serious themes, the 1^st to experiment, and the only dramatist ever to win the Nobel Prize

O n e - a c t  P l a y s ( 1 9 1 0 s ) :

- wrote one-act plays based on his experiences at sea

- followed an exaggerated realism, even naturalism

- used a natural, crude, and slangy dialogue

Thirst, and Other One-Act Plays (1914): his 1^st publ. book

Bound East for Cardiff (1916): his 1^st produced play

I n n e r  E m o t i o n  P l a y s  ( 1 9 2 0 s ) :

- put the leading characters under experiences so intense that their ‘characters’ disintegrated

- experimented with the stage techniques conveying inner emotions, frequently used modernist elements:

(a) ignored the divisions of scenes, acts, and the expected length

(b) split one character btw 2 actors

(c) re-introd. ghosts, choruses, the Shakespearean monologue, and a direct address to audience

(d) used light and sound effects to enhance emotion

Beyond the Horizon (1920): his 1^st full-length play winning him his 1^st Pulitzer Prize

The Emperor Jones (1920): a mixture of reality x fantasy against an incessant beat of drums; a seemingly civilised person gives way to a primitive fear when under stress

Anna Christie (1921): a step backward in technique x but: won him his 2^nd Pulitzer Prize

The Hairy Ape (1922): a lower-class sailor realises how he is viewed by the upper class and degenerates into what he is perceived to be

Desire Under the Elms (1924): a family conflict and desire

The Great God Brown (1926): the inner life of a successful businessman

Strange Interlude (1928):

- a 9-act play winning him his 3^rd Pulitzer Prize

- a new dramatic language: stresses breakdowns in communication, introd. the ‘interior dialogue’ [= actors speak seemingly to one another x but: actually think aloud for themselves in a stream of consciousness]

- the inner life of a beautiful woman

A u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l  P l a y s  ( 1 9 3 0 s ) :

Mourning Becomes Electra (1931):

- his most ambitious 9-hour long play, and one of his most played

- based on the Gr. drama of Sophocles

- the passions of an old New En. family at the end of the Civil War

Autobiographical Plays:

- the death of his father, mother, and brother in a close succession (1920s)

- an intention to dramatise his family life in 9 autobiog. plays featuring the Tyrones = the O’Neills

< S. Freud: the subconscious, irrational drives, importance of sex, and the lifelong infl. of parents

Ah, Wilderness! (1933):

- a ‘comedy of recollection’ centred on himself: a rebellious adolescent’s growing up in a turn-of-the-c. CT family

- the only comedy of his well over 30 plays

A Touch of the Poet (posthum.):

- centred on his miserly father James senior

- made a fortune by playing the role of The Count of Monte Christo 5,000 times x but: betrayed his ideals and destroyed his family

A Moon for the Misbegotten (posthum.):

- centred on his alcoholic brother James junior

Long Day’s Journey into Night (posthum.):

- centred on all the 4 Tyrones x but: esp. on his drug-addicted mother

- an intense 4 and ½ hour long play of seemingly unabating raw emotions, haunted characters, and the ghosts dwelling within their psyches (the word ‘ghosts’ recurs throughout the play)

- a series of encounters btw the characters: each character placed together with one or more oth. until every combination is worked through

- the characters unaware of the motives of their behaviour, their behaviour not to be explained x but: seen as the inevitable human condition

- the title: ‘day’ = a literal day in the lives of the Tyrones, ‘journey’ = their journey through life twd death

L a s t  P l a y s  ( 1 9 4 0 s ) :

The Iceman Cometh (1946):

- a 4 and ½ hour long play

- his own experience of drunk and hopeless individuals from his NY waterfront days

- climax: perhaps the longest monologue in Am. drama

Hughie (posthum.): a return to the spare claustrophobic setting of his early plays

More Stately Mansions (posthum.)

 

C l i f f o r d  O d e t s  ( 1 9 0 6 – 6 3 )

L i f e :

- son of Lithuanian-Jewish parents

- a political leftist, sympathiser with Marxism, and member of the US Communist Party

W o r k :

- establ. himself as the champion of the underprivileged

- helped to establ. the NY proletarian ‘Group Theatre’ (1931)

- conc. with topical issues, rushed the audience into rev.

- left for Hollywood as a script writer after WW II x but: achieved no success

Awake and Sing (1935): a young man experiences economic deprivations and turns from capitalism to socialism

Waiting for Lefty (1935):

- an experimental proletarian morality one-act play

- a strike of the taxi drivers with the union meeting taking place on the stage

- probably the most impressive proletarian play: uses violent speeches, music, and vivid language to stir the audience emotionally

- rev. and Marxism = the solution of the Depression

- concl.: the actors leading the audience out of the theatre in a sharp march

Till the Day I Die (1935): an anti-Nazi play

 

M a x w e l l  A n d e r s o n  ( 1 8 8 8 – 1 9 5 9 )

- a journalist and playwright

- content: a striking variety of topics from both the past and the present

- form: rather conventional x but: revitalised the verse play

What Price Glory (1924):

- portrays an Am. soldier in the WW I

- avoids idealisation: tackles the soldier’s brutality and lust for brief pleasures when not in action

Elizabeth the Queen (1930) and Mary of Scotland (1933): prose historical plays

Winterset (1935):

- his verse play masterpiece

- tackles a topical political issue of the political trials sentencing people to death

Knickerbocker Holiday (1938):

- a musical inspired by W. Irving

- parodies the Am. policies

 

T h o r n t on  W i l d e r  ( 1 8 9 7 – 1 9 75 )

- an original and witty playwright with a great imagination

- discontented with the contemp. theatre: aimed to capture reality, made the audience ‘believe’ the work of the imagination, and made them realise they know the presented sentiments from their own experience

- believed the middle class harmful to culture: the middle-brows wanted soothing, sentimental, and melodramatic comedies with characters resembling sb else and not oneself

- used repetitive patterns of experience (x individuality in experience): specification and localisation prevented to show the repetitive patterns

< the Chinese and Japanese drama using primitive scenes x but: capturing reality

Our Town (1938):

- the value of the smallest events in our daily life: the children of neighbours share childhood and school, fall in love, and get married

- the sentimental idealism broken by the Stage Director = a spokesman for the author, and a dramatic persona participating in action and holding a God-like control over the events

- a mixture of realism x expressionism (introd. the ghosts of the dead): believes reality to be only inner, in the mind, not in things, and not in scenery

The Skin of Our Teeth (1942):

- begins by making fun of old-fashioned playwriting

- events of our homely daily life against the vast dimension of time and place: presents 2 times at once, the prehistoric times, and the today’s New Jersey suburb

- presents the past as a repeating pattern: we (= the mankind) are always escaping a similar catastrophe by the skin of our teeth

< J. Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

 

L i l l i a n  H e l l m a n  ( 1 9 0 5 – 8 4)

L i f e :

- a NY playwright of Southern orig.

- an anti-fascist activist during the WW II

W o r k :

E v i l  i n  t h e  H u m a n  H e a r t :

- an individually psychological POV

The Children's Hour (1934):

- the abuse of power and its consequences

- a privileged student wrongfully accuses 2 of her college teachers of a lesbian relationship, corrupts their lives, and one of the accused commits suicide

E v i l  i n  t h e  A m e r i c a n  S o c i e t y :

- a broader POV x but: presents the social evil in individual characters and plots

The Little Foxes (1939):

- the title: from the biblical foxes destroying the fruitful vineyard

- the destructive foxes = the symbol for the ruthlessness of the Southern enterprising family of the Hubbards

- later a film version

The Watch on the Rhine (1941):

- a warning for the Am. public before the danger of fascism

- the activities of the Nazis in the US

- later a film version