'O'Neill Festival at 10' Hosts Free Readings, Screenings Jan.4-13

The Playwrights Theater, sponsored by Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's O'Neill at Yale project, will present The O'Neill Festival at 10, ten days of free readings, screenings and discussions as well as a musical revue to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the O'Neill.   From January 4 - 13 this O'Neill celebration will take place at New York University's Provincetown Playhouse (133 MacDougal Street).  Reservations can be made online at www.eugeneoneill.net.

The film retrospective begins January 4 with Long Day's Journey Into Night, starring Katherine Hepburn and Jason Robards.   Successive evenings will have Geraldine Fitzgerald in Ah,Wilderness! (January 5), William Bendix in The Hairy Ape (January 6), The Long Voyage Home with John Wayne (January 7), Desire Under the Elms with Sophia Loren (January 8), Greta Garbo in Anna Christie (January 9) and finally, A Moon for the Misbegotten with Jason Robards (January 10).   All movie screenings begin at 7pm.

Jan 11 at 7:30pm begins the live performance aspect of this festival.  Tony winners Zoe Caldwell and Marian Seldes mark the 10th Anniversary by reading excerpts from plays where America's only Nobel Prize winning playwright draws on his own mother for some of his most memorable characters.  The evening, entitled O'Neill: Playwright and his Mother will conclude with a post reading discussion conducted by Barbara Gelb, pre-eminent O'Neill scholar.

Since this is the Festival's 10th anniversary, January 12 at 7:30pm marks the return of The O'Neill Revue, an evening of parlor songs and sea chanties, the same program which launched the festival in 1998.  Cabaret stars Steve Ross, KT Sullivan and actor Kristoffer Poluha will reunite to sing the songs heard in The Iceman Cometh and Ah!, Wilderness.  Tony winner Charles Durning will make a guest appearance.  Also featured is The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus from Yale, where this biographical concert is performed annually.

In 1998, the O'Neill festival commenced with the purpose of staging the playwrights' complete canon, in chronological order, 50 works in all.  His first 17 have been staged to date as either readings or productions.  In The Zone and Ile will be the 18th and 19th plays to be performed.

Every year Yale Drama School playwrights are linked with Yale College and High School playwrights in a mentorship anchored by an O'Neill play.  This year's focal work it is Ile.  At 2pm plays by Amy Herzog of the Yale School of Drama, Lauren Yee from Yale College and Janet Silva from New Haven Public Schools will be performed by Yale Drama School alumni.

The festival concludes at 7:30pm with In The Zone and Ile.  Charles Durning, Brian Murray, Frank Wood, Harris Yulin and David Margulies are featured in these lesser known O'Neill works both set at sea.

During the film series, from January 4 - 10, each evening will conclude with a post-screening discussion, relating to the film just seen. To kick off this series, Stephen Kennedy Murphy will moderate a discussion following the presentation of Long Days Journey Into Night on  January 4.  (Kennedy Murphy is the founder and artistic director of the O'Neill Festival, and for 8 years was playwright-in-residence at the Monte Cristo Cottage, O'Neill's boyhood home and the setting for Long Days Journey Into Night.)  Other highlights include a performance of music from Take Me Along, the musical inspired by Ah, Wilderness!, following that screening; a discussion with Theodore Mann, artistic director of Circle-in-the-Square, will follow the screening of The Iceman Cometh on January 8; and on January 9, Natasha Richardson will be on hand to discuss that evening's offering, Anna Christie.  Ms. Richardson received the 1993 Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway production of that O'Neill work.

The Playwrights Theater presents The O'Neill Festival at 10, ten days of free readings, screenings, discussions and a musical revue to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the O'Neill, from January 4 - 13 at New York University's Provincetown Playhouse (133 MacDougal Street).  Reservations for this FREE series can be made online at www.eugeneoneill.net.