The First Performance at the Provincetown Playhouse : A Milestone in American Theater

In 1918, a small but revolutionary event took place in the heart of Greenwich Village, forever changing the landscape of American theater. The Provincetown Playhouse, a humble venue at 133 MacDougal Street, hosted its first performance, marking the beginning of an artistic movement that would shape the future of modern theatre in the United States. The play that launched this historic moment was Bound East for Cardiff by Eugene O’Neill, one of the most groundbreaking playwrights of the 20th century.

Founded by a group of artists including playwrights, directors, and actors in Provincetown, MA in 1915, the Provincetown Playhouse grew to become more than just a theater; it was a sanctuary for experimental and avant-garde theatre. The group originated as a gathering of writers and artists, most of whom spent summers in Provincetown, MA. They began to have play readings composed by the artists who were vacationing together. The first staging was on July 15, 1915, on the veranda of a rented ocean-view cottage. The two plays on the bill that evening were Constancy by Neith Boyce and Suppressed Desires by husband and wife George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell. Boyce previously had a reading of her play in her home a few weeks prior and this caused Cook and Glaspell to add their play to create a social event for their friends. Two makeshift sets, one facing the ocean and one facing the living room, were quickly organized by Robert Edmond Jones, already the most prominent American practicing the “New Stagecraft.” Many friends and neighbors not in attendance that night heard about the plays and expressed a desire to see them, so the group convinced journalist and novelist Mary Heaton Vorse to present the plays on a wharf she owned.

Back in Greenwich Village, where most of the group lived full-time, George Cram Cook stirred up such great enthusiasm during the fall and winter of 1915 that an even greater number of writers and artists made their way to Provincetown the next summer. These new participants included journalist and poet John Reed, writer Louise Bryant, painter Marsden Hartley, artists William and Marguerite Zorach, the famed “Hobo Poet” Harry Kemp, editor of The Masses Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, and Eugene O’Neill.

The group subsequently decided to try out their summertime experiment back in New York City so that they could devote their energy to the endeavor more frequently. By the end of the summer, after some minor recognition in the Boston papers, the group formed an organization whose primary purpose was to give venue to American playwrights and new American plays, purposefully encouraging plays that would be in contrast to the melodramas and entertainments on Broadway at the time.  They very quickly gave larger voice to the burgeoning “Little Theatre” movement taking place across the country. 

Initially led by George Cram Cook and John Reed, the Provincetown Players moved to New York City that fall of 1916 and turned the first-floor parlor of an apartment at 139 Macdougal Street, an 1840 row house, into a theatre. The group quickly found purchase and the initial space proved to be too small in short order. Three doors away at 133 MacDougal Street was an old stable that had recently been used as a bottling plant. The Players rented it for $400 a month and put in a scenery shop and dressing rooms in the basement and offices upstairs. Benches that could seat up to 200 were installed facing a stage.

The first performance in the new theater took place on November 22, 1918, just three days after the end of World War I was declared, with a bill of one-act plays by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Florence Kiper Frank, and Eugene O’Neill’s East Bound for Cardiff.

The 1918 performance was significant not just for O’Neill’s work but for the Provincetown Playhouse itself. It symbolized a shift away from the more commercial, Broadway-style plays of the time, embracing instead a more intimate and honest approach to storytelling. This was a defining moment for the American theater world, where writers like O’Neill could experiment with complex characters and unflinching portrayals of life, giving voice to the struggles of the working class and the disillusioned.

The Provincetown Playhouse became the birthplace of modern American drama, a testament to the power of small, intimate spaces in fostering creativity. It was here that O’Neill’s early works found a stage, influencing generations of playwrights to come. The 1918 debut is remembered as a pivotal moment in theater history, setting the stage for the future of American drama, and leaving an indelible mark on the evolution of modern theatre.