Join us for a comprehensive history of the Provincetown Players and their influence on modern American theatre.

The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theater, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance unlike anything that characterized the commercial theater of the early twentieth century. This study draws on many new sources that have only become available in the last three decades; this new material modifies, refutes, and enhances many aspects of previous studies.

At its center of the study is an extensive account of the career of George Cram Cook, the Players’ leader and artistic conscience, as well as one of the most significant facilitators of modernist writing in early twentieth-century American literature and theater. It traces Cook’s mission of “cultural patriotism,” which drove him toward creating a uniquely American identity in theater.

Special attention is paid to the many legends connected to the group (such as the “discovery” of Eugene O’Neill), and also adds to the biographical record of the Players’ forty-seven playwrights, including Susan Glaspell, Neith Boyce, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Floyd Dell, Rita Wellman, Mike Gold, Djuna Barnes, and John Reed. The fascinating artistic, literary, and historical personalities who crossed the Players’ paths, including Emma Goldman, Charles Demuth, Berenice Abbott, Sophie Treadwell, Theodore Dreiser, Claudette Colbert, and Charlie Chaplin are also explored. This book highlights the revolutionary nature of those living in bohemian Greenwich Village who were at the heart of the Players and the America they were responding to in their plays.

About the Speaker:

Jeffery Kennedy is associate professor of interdisciplinary arts and performance at Arizona State University. He is author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on American theater history, with a strong focus on Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, and the Provincetown Players.