Provincetown Players at the Beginning

Provincetown Players

At the beginning of the 20th century, as the Victorian era ended, new forms of art, literature and theater became popular in the United States that was not as constrained as earlier forms. Provincetown, which is on the tip of Cape Cod, was a summer gathering place for many artists and writers disillusioned with the cultural norms of the time. As a result, in 1916 a group of avant-garde actors and producers aptly called "The Provincetown Players" developed a theater form that would have an impact for many decades to come.

George Cram Cook (Jig), one of the originators of Provincetown Players stated in a book about the theater in 1920, "Groups like ours are about to inherit the whole duty of dramatic man." This was an entirely new concept, because America had not been considered the center for literary leadership. When Cook's theatrical experiment began, cultivated Europeans were still sneering at the concept of American theatre and drama. It was not that theatre buildings, dramatic publications, and theatrical productions were nonexistent in the U.S., but rather that American playwrights and actors, designers and directors were still virtually unheard of in Europe (Sarlaos 1).

The other Provincetown Players included Jig's third wife, novelist Susan Glaspell; poet and reporter John Reed, who later helped shape the Communist Party of America and his woman friend Mabel Dodge; and author and labor organizer Mary Heaton Vorse, who had, according to legend, "discovered" Provincetown in 1907, and her second husband, newspaper reporter Joe O'Brien. In addition, there was Mabel Dodge's "confidant" and the anarchist Hutchins Hapgood, who also had strong labor ties, written sociological studies, and shared Cook's desire to create the "beloved community of life givers," and his wife, Neith Boyce, was a writer of short stories and novels. Finally, there was Brr Nordfeldt, who was known for bold post-Impressionist art (ibid).

In 1917 Darcy Mackay (50) called these entrepreneurs unique but "uneven in their technique": "The fact that the Provincetown Players give a new production every three weeks and that the people who act are also engaged in doing other work shows that the performances cannot approach perfection." At one performance plays and acting "will be exceedingly good," while at the next performance "they may suffer a sea change." Yet, since all the work of the theatre falls on the shoulders of this small group of players, they are worthy of positive comment. They make and paint their own scenery and design and create the costumes using their small stage as a workshop. The lighting used in connection with the various scenes is also managed by the members. As a result, they can get by without charging too much money.

What truly made the Provincetown Players a name for themselves, however, was producing the works of Eugene O'Neill. He was pleased to work with them for a couple of reasons: First, they shared his socialist political leanings and second, since he was relatively new in his field, he had an opportunity to try out his plays. They became so successful, in fact, they had to move. After two summers the Players moved from Cape Cod to New York City, where in six seasons they produced 97 plays by 47 American authors, foremost of whom were O'Neill and their own member Susan Glaspell. Most of these plays would had not reached the stage if artistic considerations rather than commercial ones been paramount (Pfister 109).

Because of their ties with the labor unions, O'Neill and the Provincetown Players' works sometimes promoted this ideology. "The Iceman Cometh" and "The Hairy Ape," contain a number of allusions to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or what was know as the Wobblies. The period of 1905 through 1917 was the heyday of the IWW, when the organization showed considerable power as an industrial labor movement (Dugan 109).

The Iceman Cometh" only has a small mention of IWW, the audience quickly became conscious of something called "the Movement" in the back room at Harry Hope's Saloon. This background provided a link to the world of 1912. O'Neill's knowledge of the movement is demonstrated by his delineation of the political profiles of his characters (Dugan 110)

This mention of the IWW in O'Neill's plays may be seen as a realistic frame for the lives of several characters in a complex play. 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).