MPR’s Nancy Fushan interviews George White, director of O'Neill Theater Center, about Eugene O'Neill's play "A Touch of the Poet."

Transcript:

(00:00:00) The plays of Eugene O'Neill run the gamut of theatrical Esprit from the gentle Comedy All Wilderness to the Epic tragedy Long Day's Journey Into Night, but throughout the mall is the feeling of New England and particularly O'Neill's hometown of New London Connecticut having shared that residence director George White is comfortable with the social and geographical backdrops provided by O'Neal.
(00:00:20) First of all, it's right on the on the sea, which has a great deal of influence on O'Neill's work. Secondly. It is very much a New England. Community with all of the air to all of the sort of things that New England communities are to both in the puritanical sense in the repression of puritanical morality and one level the Yankee social structure old Welk Irish immigrants the looking down on the Irish immigrant the conflict between Shanty and lace-curtain Irish. All of that is very much apart and plus the fact that Neil's early life they're growing up and having the very strong experiences that he did in New London. He drew many of his characters and in fact great any of his characters from people he knew growing
(00:01:14) up in touch of the poet O'Neill includes many of those references amid, the story of ill-fated love and Broken Dreams It Was Written in 1936 as the start of an ambitious theater project.
(00:01:26) The idea was originally that he was going to trace a family by the name of Harford, which was a Yankee family originally from I think 18 for through to 1932 and then he began to expand the idea and he decided well, we'll go back a little farther to 1755 and then go on and what started out to be in the seven play cycle eventually became in O'Neal's mind to be an 11-play cycle. And it's a rather wild idea. It's both a horrible idea and a wonderful idea all at once. Well, it's first of all, you've got to make sure that a play can stand on its own which indeed I think he did with touch of the poet and it's very very dramatically difficult to sustain something like that. And what I'm really saying is it's an impractical theatrical idea. It's still such a huge concept. It's a kind of a so wild that it's wonderful in the sense. It's so
(00:02:25) big O'Neill would complete only a touch of the poet and portions of another. In the cycle more stately Mansions the rest remained in lengthy outline form by the early 1940s. The playwright was seized by illness and depression seized. So strongly in fact that he and his wife walked along the Cliffs at Marblehead Massachusetts tearing the outlines to shreds and tossing them into the sea for George White A Touch of the poet is more than the Vestige of An Unfinished literary dream. It is the first indication of O'Neal's maturing as a dramatist. He's going beyond the melodrama of earlier
(00:02:58) Works. He began kind of In a sense find his sea legs if you will and and or really take full stride as amateur playwright and start really to delve into the whole relationship of love hate things between human beings and family relationships and human relationships are really very strong. And this is to me the beginning of that whole thing that comes out of course later and Iceman and Long Day's Journey and moon for the misbegotten. It's really the beginning of those Two men Des mature
(00:03:32) Works a touch of the poet has not received the widespread production of some of O'Neal's other works white believes. It's been approached by directors with some reticence mainly because the play is in need of editing.
(00:03:44) It's not because I think that O'Neill didn't know what was dramatically viable heaven knows he does it's that because he shelled it and never saw it produce. It was produced in 1957 not in his lifetime. He never probably made the final edit. If he never had to deal with actors who said I can't go on like this for four five hours saying this stuff and it's repetitive so though. He made an almost finally went through three or four or five how many many drafts he did. He never actually did a final edit being an editor of someone work of the stature of oatmeal must be a tenuous process. Well it is if one did it outside of the realm of production, but working here on a production we have actors. the rehearsal process with you It becomes surprisingly easy. Because if I was sitting alone in a room editing it, I would go crazy. And and I in matter of fact when I tried to edit it before I came out to do it I flailed around and thought well, yeah, but you know, there's that picks up a theme that you know use later on. I really don't want to get rid of that and that's terribly indicative of this that and the other thing and once you get into the rehearsal process, which is of course the whole thing that makes plays work is and of course is very dear to my heart the doing of Work any kind of work a player when you get down to it, even when even in O'Neill who never you know, he was a dramatist like in a Craftsman, but he still had to see things on
(00:05:16) its feet director George White who when he's not putting shows on the boards heads the O'Neill theater center in Waterford, Connecticut. I'm Nancy Fusion.