Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 6, 2001

Volume 29, Number 25

Plays by local youths, noted dramatists will be staged

A play by two New Haven youths will be staged with Eugene O'Neill's one-act play "Before Breakfast" and its inspiration, August Strindberg's "The Stronger," Monday-Thursday, April 9-12, at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St.

The combined performance is sponsored by the O'Neill at Yale project in collaboration with ALSO-Cornerstone Inc., a private nonprofit agency that provides services in the areas of substance abuse and mental health. Performances will take place each night at 7 p.m. Admission is free, but reservations are suggested. For reservations, send email to anne.letterman@yale.edu or call (203) 432-2969.

The collaboration involving local youth adds a new dimension to the O'Neill at Yale project, which is now in its fourth year. The goal of the project is to produce all 49 of Eugene O'Neill's plays. For this part of the project, the two New Haven youngsters -- John Whitley III and Nathaniel Morgan -- will write a play based on techniques employed by O'Neill and Strindberg. They will work under the advisement of Stephen Kennedy Murphy, artistic director of O'Neill at Yale, with coordination support from Robin Callahan.

Yale undergraduates Fei Liu and Caroline Duncan will perform the O'Neill and Strindberg plays, which will be directed by Murphy, who is also artistic director of The Playwrights Theatre of New York. The mission of The Playwrights Theatre is to explore the work of noted theater artists in search of clues that could help in the development of new works. The curriculum is based on The Playwrights Theatre's work at Sing-Sing Prison, where inmates use improvisation to create new plays after seeing O'Neill's plays.

The program at the Beinecke Library is the product of a collaboration between Patricia Willis, curator of the library's American Literature Collection, and Esther Armmand, director of prevention and intervention programs for ALSO-Cornerstone Inc. ALSO-Cornerstone was created this year with the merger of the Alcohol Services Organization of South Central Connecticut Inc. and Cornerstone Inc.

"The personal connection between Eugene O'Neill and challenged New Haven youth may seem tenuous, but it extends beyond O'Neill's bequest of his papers to Yale," says Willis. "O'Neill was the son of an alcoholic father and substance-abusing mother. All of his plays address alcoholism or substance abuse; many plays center around characters whose abuse harms or hinders them and their families. O'Neill's own triumph over alcoholism at age 35 led to a career of international acclaim."

O'Neill earned four Pulitzer Prizes and the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the only playwright ever to achieve that distinction. He also won an honorary degree from Yale.

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