Brian Dennehy to be Featured Guest Speaker at Eugene O'Neill Celebration, 10/16-10/18

Brian Dennehy, a leading figure in American theater, renowned for his roles in the plays of Eugene O'Neill, will highlight the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 10th Annual Eugene O'Neill Celebration, presented this year in collaboration with the Eugene O'Neill Society and Connecticut College and with the support of the Frank Loomis Palmer Fund. Mr. Dennehy is an active member of the Center's Board of Trustees.

Held on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of O'Neill's birth, the Celebration will take place at Monte Cristo Cottage, New London on Friday, October 16 and Sunday, October 18, and at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center on Saturday, October 17. All events are open to the public free of charge, with lunch available for purchase on Saturday. Advance registration is not required, but is encouraged.

Preston Whiteway, O'Neill executive director said: "We are deeply grateful to the Frank Loomis Palmer Fund for its continued generous support, and delighted to bring the great Brian Dennehy together with O'Neill scholars from far and wide to celebrate Eugene O'Neill's legacy of literary excellence and to delve into a new and fascinating Celebration theme - "The Irish and the Yankees in O'Neill."

Friday activities will get underway at 5:30 pm at Monte Cristo Cottage with a reception welcoming guest speakers followed by a presentation on O'Neill's Irishness and booksigning by Robert M. Dowling of New London, author and associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. In addition, guests will be the first to see "Ella's Room," the bedroom of Ellen O'Neill, mother of Eugene O'Neill, recently refurbished and furnished in period style. Monte Cristo Cottage, the O'Neill family's summer home, is now owned and operated as a museum by the O'Neill.

On Saturday, at the O'Neill Center in Waterford, registration will begin at 9:30 am, followed by a keynote address, morning panel discussion: "The Irish v Yankees in O'Neill," featuring guest speakers and O'Neill scholars Thierry Dubost, a professor at the University of Caen Basse-Normandie, Caen, France; Sheila Hickey Garvey, professor of theater at Southern Connecticut State University; Eileen Herrmann, a two-time Fulbright recipient and a lecturer at the Universities of California at Davis and Santa Cruz, and Rob Dowling. The panel will be moderated by Kenneth Kuzmich, assistant professor and chair of the Department of Global Studies and Director of Study Abroad at Mitchell College.

In addition, Saturday's program will include readings from O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet, presented by Connecticut College theater students, an Open Dialogue with Eileen Herrmann and Sheila Hickey Garvey, "A Conversation with Brian Dennehy," conducted by Robert A. Richter, Director of Arts Programming at Connecticut College, and a presentation by Thierry Dubost.

On Sunday, from 11 am to 3 pm, Monte Cristo Cottage will be open to the public for free tours.

Monte Cristo Cottage is located at 325 Pequot Avenue, New London. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center is located at 305 Great Neck Road, Waterford. For further information or to register for the Eugene O'Neill Celebration, visit www.theoneill.org, or contact the O'Neill at 203-443-5378 x 230.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 in honor of Eugene O'Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize winner and America's only playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is America's preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for the American theater. The O'Neill has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and 2,500 emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O'Neill have gone on to full production at other theaters around the world, including Broadway, Off-Broadway and major regional theaters. O'Neill programs include the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Critics Institute, National Puppetry Conference, the Cabaret & Performance Conference, and National Theater Institute, which conducts semester-long, fully accredited intensive theater training programs and Theatermakers, a six-week accredited summer program. In addition, the O'Neill owns and operates Monte Cristo Cottage as a museum. The childhood summer home of Eugene O'Neill, the Cottage is a National Historic Landmark. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center has received a Tony Award, the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theatre Excellence and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award. For more information, visit the O'Neill website, www.theoneill.org or email theaterlives@theoneill.org

Robert M. Dowling is an associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University. He is the author of Slumming in New York: From the Waterfront to Mythic Harlem (University of Illinois Press, 2007; paperback 2008) and the two-volume Critical Companion to Eugene O'Neill: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work (Facts on File, 2009). His latest projects include a forthcoming critical anthology on Eugene O'Neill's early bohemian and radical influences, co-edited with Eileen Herrmann (McFarland, 2010), and Eugene O'Neill: The Contemporary Reviews, co-edited with Jackson R. Bryer, a compendium of reviews of O'Neill's books and plays (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Dowling has also written an introduction and edited version of O'Neill's short story "The Screenews of War" in the journal Resources for American Literary Study (RALS) and his essay "Sad Endings and Negative Heroes: American Drama in the Naturalist Tradition" is forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook to American Literary Naturalism. He is a member of the editorial board of The Eugene O'Neill Review and was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Eugene O'Neill Society.

Thierry Dubost is a Professor at the University of Caen Basse-Normandie. He is the author of Struggle, Defeat or Rebirth : Eugene O'Neill's Vision of Humanity (MacFarland, 1997 [2005]) ; The Plays of Thomas Kilroy (McFarland, 2007) as well as the co-editor of La Femme noire américaine : aspects d'une crise d'identité (PUC, 1997), George Bernard Shaw, un dramaturge engagé (PUC, 1998), Du Dire à l'être : tensions identitaires dans la littérature nord-américaine (PUC, 2000). His research interests include Irish / American / African drama. He has translated Wole Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman into French.

Sheila Hickey Garvey is a Professor of Theater at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) where she teaches Acting and Directing and directs productions each season in SCSU's Lyman Center for the Performing Arts. Her 2006 production of the American Premiere of Ellen Kaplan's Pulling Apart received the prestigious Moss Hart Award and her spring 2008 production of Shirley Lauro's A Piece of My Heart received the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Region I award for Outstanding Women's Initiative Production. She has been a John F. Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Directing Fellow and is a lifetime elected member of the New England Theatre's Conferences College of Fellows. Her acting work has included performances with Long Wharf Theatre, The Kitchen Playwright's Theatre, The Weathervane Theatre, The Allenberry Playhouse and The Williamstown Theatre Festival. Dr. Garvey writes about performance topics as a member of the review staff of The New England Theatre Journal. Her articles on theatrical performance especially those pertaining to major post World War II revivals of Eugene O'Neill's plays have appeared in The Eugene O'Neill Review, Theatre Survey, The Recorder and Coup de Theatre, a journal of the Sorbonne.

She is a Past President of the Eugene O'Neill Society (2001-2003), a co-editor and a contributor to the book Jason Robards Remembered (MacFarland Inc., 2001) and a contributor to A Critical Companion to Eugene O'Neill: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, ed. Robert Dowling (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2009). She hold sa B.S. from Emerson College (Theatre), an M.A. from Northwestern University (Directing) and a Ph.D. from New York University (TISCH) in Performance Studies.

Eileen Herrmann, a two-time Fulbright recipient, has lectured at the Universities of California at Davis and Santa Cruz, San Francisco State University, Johannes Gutenberg Universitat (Mainz, Germany), and Dominican University of California. She has written and lectured on Eugene O'Neill in the United States and abroad and has authored several papers on the art of Eugene O'Neill. She serves on both the boards of the Eugene O'Neill Foundation and the Eugene O'Neill Society. She is currently co-editing a book of essays addressing the political dimensions of the drama of Eugene O'Neill to be published by McFarland Press.

Kenneth Kuzmich is assistant professor and Chair of the Department of Global Studies and Director of Study Abroad at Mitchell College. He is currently developing a summer exchange program concentrating on Irish literature and the Abbey Theater of Dublin's influence on Eugene O'Neill.

Robert A. Richter is director of Arts Programming at Connecticut College. He received a bachelor of arts in anthropology and theater from Connecticut College and a master in liberal studies from Wesleyan University. He has at Mystic Seaport, where he supervised and developed programs that used theater to interpret history. He continues to consult for museums and historical societies on public program development and the creation and implementation of performance based programs. His book Eugene O'Neill and Dat Ole Davil Sea was a finalist for the 2005 Connecticut Book Award.

Advance registration is required. For more information, please visit www.oneilltheatercenter.org

 

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