PLAY OF THE DAY! Today's Play: THE EMPEROR JONES by Eugene O'Neill
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Apr. 16, 2020
During this time when productions all over the world have been put on pause, we are coming together to celebrate plays that have left their mark on theater history.
This week we will be focusing on the plays of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Eugene O'Neill.
Today's play, The Emperor Jones!
The Emperor Jones tells the story of Brutus Jones, an African American man who kills another man in a dice game and escapes to a small Caribbean island where he sets himself up as emperor. The play is told in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the jungle to escape former subjects who have rebelled against him.
The play mixes expressionism and realism, is focused on an unreliable narrator, and is told from multiple points of view.
The Emperor Jones was Eugene O'Neill's first big box-office hit.
The play was revived on Broadway in 1925 and starred Paul Robeson in the title role. The Emperor Jones has been staged throughout the country and around the world, with productions going up in 1980 at the Royal Exchange, Manchester; in 2005 at the Bush Theatre in London; and in 2009 at New York's Irish Repertory Theatre.
The play has been adapted into a 1933 film starring Paul Robeson, a 1933 opera at the Metropolitan Opera; a television adaptation in 1955 and much more.
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