Provincetown Players at the Beginning Term Paper

However, this relationship with a labor organization provides more than that. Former IWW members Larry Slade and Don Parritt are haunted by the organization. Although not a former member, Kalmer is an anarchist. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) divided workers into narrow unions pursuing particular interests related to their trades and working conditions rather than creating larger comprehensive bargaining units. The IWW approach to railroad workers, for example, was a single large union instead of separate locals of firemen, switchmen, engineers, porters, among others, united behind the common cause of all the workers -- this common cause also being formed with other sizeable unions to provide a single industrial front (ibid)..

Yet it was not only O'Neill who made a name for himself and the IWW with the Provincetown Players. Susan Glaspell produced a wide variety of plays during this time that also promoted women in the theater. One of these is a one-act subversive play called "Triffles," that frequently where men and women interpret quite differently the "evidence" of an alleged crime. Some critics see Glaspell's feminist writing at odds with her relationship with "Jig" Cook, and his wild schemes, financial and emotional dependence, infidelity and alcoholism. However, women working to support their men was not uncommon among their social set at that time, and Glaspell was anything but oppressed. Apart from an occasionally humorous but never unkind joke, she seemed content to facilitate Cook's pursuit of his dreams as the Provincetown Players (Jones 64).

They may have been a strange group, but the Provincetown Players provided an excellent outlet for their separate needs: political fervor, artistic zeal, trial of new works, Greek theater production, friendship and feminism. In his book Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village, the American Bohemia, 1910-1960, the late Ross Wetzsteon retells the story of O'Neill's relationship with Jig Cook. O'Neill, young, tortured, nearly fatally alcoholic, is introduced to the idealistic company by a fellow drunk who knows that Eugene keeps some plays in a trunk.These experimental, irreverent plays are just what the Provincetown Players want. The plays thrill everyone on the Cape and the players stand out in the purposefully amateur evenings of one-acts in several New York seasons. Over time, the newspapers and Broadway discover O'Neill, a couple of Pulitzers follow and the playwright and soon-closed down theatre part company (London 18).

Many different reasons are given to why the Provincetown Players disbanded after six successful seasons, when they were doing so well. Perhaps because of O'Neill going to Broadway, or Cook's controlling leadership style or the different personalities that made up this motley crew. Ben-Zvi looks at it from the opposite angle: It was positive that they stayed together much longer than any other group during the time:

much longer than almost any other institution begun at the same time.

The Liberal Club, Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery, Mabel Dodge's salon, the radical journal the Masses, Emma Goldman's anarchist magazine, Mother Earth, the Washington Square Players and the Neighborhood Playhouse had long since ceased functioning by 1922. Only the feminist group Heterodoxy weathered the Red Scare and the Jazz Age, finally ceasing in 1940 after 28 years. The wonder of the Provincetown Players is not that it ended in 1922, but that it made it until 1922 and made theater history in the process (495).

References

Ben-Zvi, Linda. Susan Glaspell Her Life and Times Oxford: Oxford Press, 2005.

Dugan, Lawrence. O'Neill and the Wobblies: The IWW as a Model for Failure in the Iceman Cometh. Comparative Drama. 36.2 (2002):109

Jones, Susan. Uncommon Woman: In a Necessary New Biography, the Prolific Susan Glaspell Emerges from the Shadow of O'Neill. American Theatre. 22.9(2005): 64

London, Todd

The Shape of Plays to Come: Our Theatre Is Polarized into Two Cultures. What Will Make it Whole Again American Theatre, 19(2000): 18

Pfister, Joel Staging Depth: Eugene O'Neill and….....