What’s the deal with O’Neil?
The Master Playwright Festival will immerse audiences in the work of one of the greats
Janice Sawka

Eugene O’Neill was born Oct.16, 1888. By many accounts — including his own — he was a man of astounding contradictions.

Raised a Catholic, he turned his back on religion. While his father was a romantic idol of the theatre, the O’Neill household was cold and loveless. Eugene despised his father’s heavy drinking, yet became an alcoholic himself — while still in his teens.

He dropped out of schools and courses almost as fast as he enrolled. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) hold a job, getting fired or quitting and jumping from place to place. When young Eugene impregnated his girlfriend, his father, fearing the girl’s family would sue, arranged for him to work in Honduras. Eugene responded by secretly marrying the girl — and then taking off for Honduras for two years. Sued for divorce when he returned, he attempted suicide, was rescued by a friend, contracted tuberculosis the following year and spent six months in a sanitarium.

He’s a lost cause, most people would have said.

Yet Eugene O’Neill came to be considered one of the greatest American playwrights. He won the Pulitzer Prize for drama four times, as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature. Even when his health became erratic, he still found the strength and focus to write The Iceman Cometh, which consisted of… get ready… 19 characters, nine acts, three intermissions, and a running time of almost five hours!

When he was asked to shorten the play, O’Neill’s reported response was to threaten to make it longer.

For more insight into this fascinating man, one viewpoint wasn’t enough. Here then, is Eugene O’Neill, as seen through the eyes of a theatre director, an artistic director, the general manager of a theatre company, an academic and an actor.

Diana Leblanc
Director, Long Day’s Journey Into Night
When asked what word comes to mind when she is about to direct an O’Neill play, Leblanc responds quickly:
“Daunting,” she says, then quickly adds “Remarkably rewarding.”
Leblanc, who directed Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Stratford before doing so again for MTC, pulls no punches in admitting that the downbeat, one-set, three-hour play about a collapsing family in 1912 could very well be “a tedious and deadly evening — but only if badly done.

“This play is one of the enduring masterpieces of American theatre,” she says. “As mercilessly as O’Neill has written this, he has written with such tenderness. He takes a quotidien situation — a family in breakup mode — and puts a note on tragedy that people recognize.”

Leblanc believes that O’Neill’s magic lies in his capacity to show, onstage, “the hunger at the heart of every human being.

“I defy people to watch and remain uninvolved in this play. It’s just extraordinarily powerful. O’Neill — and the play is biographical, so we can actually see the beginnings of his career in the script — has captured his own search for that something that would give him joy or peace or comfort in his life.”

Steven Schipper
Artistic director, Manitoba Theatre Centre
In his position as artistic director, Schipper is the person largely responsible for choosing the playwright annually honoured by the Master Playwright Festival. Clearly pleased with his choice for 2006, he candidly recalls an incident when he heard some moanings from the local theatrical community:

“Someone was saying, ‘How on earth am I going to portray a play that takes place entirely in this place?’
My response was, ‘Try using imagination.’ I’ll admit I was bemused.”

Schipper says he has a personal soft spot for O’Neill.

“I remember I was pumping gas as a high school student about the time I read his biography and became fascinated by his life. How did he do all those things? I believe some people only find a way to work when they light upon their passion. I can personally relate. I was never a particularly dedicated student until I got to theatre school.”

Schipper sees O’Neill as a trailblazer who “gave artists the potential to be imagistic rather than literal.

“This festival gives us the chance to sample a wide selection of plays that, frankly, aren’t often produced. But his plays are still relevant because he writes about troubled souls. And there’s still quite a few of those around.”

Zaz Bajon
General manager, Manitoba Theatre Centre
“We’re doing this for the benefit of the community,” Bajon says when asked just what MTC gets out of producing the Master Playwright Festival.

“People can celebrate the large body of work produced by an artist of stature without having to wait 30 years to see all the plays produced. Otherwise, you might happen to see one play by a playwright, not like it, think to yourself, ‘This is crap,’ and never know the others you missed.”

MTC is the only regional theatre in Canada that holds such a festival.

“We produce one play and help get the overall co-ordination and marketing together. It’s like the Fringe Festival in that way, except this is a single focus.”

But doesn’t a festival such as this just preach to the converted? How many tourists are in Winnipeg in January?

“We’re here for those who live here,” Bajon says. “So they don’t have to go to New York, or wherever, for quality theatre.”

Bill Kerr
Assistant professor of theatre, University of Manitoba
“I think O’Neill is fascinatingly American,” Kerr says. “He’s a melting pot, like his country, not of cultures, but of styles — naturalism, realism, expressionism, modernism.

He also is certainly influenced by the craft of theatre — his father was an actor, so I’d argue he knows the (technical) rules very well. He handles comic timing amazingly well. His work is expansive and inclusive, ranging from one act, to nine acts.”

Kerr believes O’Neill’s appeal lies in his recurring themes of dreaming and searching.

“So often we see the search for truth or hope or even a kind of ‘hopeless hope.’ You don’t expect this to be enjoyable, but it is. As a writer, he makes tragedy incredibly moving, while showing there’s always a comic verve to life. He creates wonderful speeches that get to a poignant truth. He pushes the audience through a journey. It’s exhausting, in a good way.”

Mike Shara
Actor, Long Day’s Journey Into Night
“Why should we still watch O’Neill? Because there’s a lot of shit out there, empty shit, in popular entertainment — film, theatre, television. This is the real thing. These plays will give you something you can never get from another car chase.”