The laundry is done; now the notebook gets unpacked. I filled the better part of a good-sized Moleskine over five days at the ATCA conference—notes I intend to turn into a widely read, much-talked-about feature this fall in Dramatics magazine, where I’m fortunate enough to have a full-time...
Friday morning we visited the Monte Cristo cottage where O’Neill spent his boyhood summers. Since my principal frame of reference is Long Day’s Journey into Night, I was pleasantly surprised by the house. I expected it to be dark and claustrophobic, but the rooms on the first...
Jay Handelman (left), Wendy Rosenfield, Goodspeed’s Dan McMahon and Barbara Gross encounter Domina’s bust from “Forum.” I review mostly dramas. As some of my ATCA colleagues know, I’ve Jay Handelman (left), Wendy Rosenfield, Goodspeed’s Dan McMahon and Barbara Gross encounter Domina’s bust from “Forum.”never been a...
Saturday — This was the perfect time for the ATCA crowd to visit the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center for a few days. The O’Neill had just won the Tony Award for Regional Theater, an award it certainly deserves for its years of resolute, proactive, and...
Monday morning — The heavens opened today, as if in copious regret that the critics had left New London. Or gratitude, perhaps. It rained as we arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday, then gradually cleared to the glories of the last few days, so it all...
Sunday — We’ve had some moving moments this week at the O’Neill. Must be the spectre of ATCA’s birthing Under the Copper Beech so many years ago. Sunday afternoon a few of us attended the reading of Natashina Mechta, i.e. Natasha’s Dream at the Rose Barn Theater. Billed...
George White, tenderly holding the Tony. {Friday — In the room next to ATCA’s Friday morning meeting in New London’s Radisson Hotel, there was a gathering of suits paying tribute. Turned out, it was the local Chamber of Commerce honoring the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and its...
Official day #1: Had an animated and exciting conversation with one of the many directors at the O’Neill. It was so much fun talking theater ideas. Only lasted a couple of minutes, but it was so intense it’s easy to see how inspiring and motivating...
Thursday noon — “Not only did we get to ride on a school bus, we also got to show&tell.” Thus spake Leonard Jacobs, one of the intrepid gaggle of ATCA members who, Thursday morning, clambered off the yellow beast and up the steps to the boyhood...
Sitting on the porch of Eugene O’Neill’s Monte Cristo Cottage created a special variant of déjà vu that connected two giants of the American theater. Settling into one of the rocking chairs overlooking the Thames River felt just like settling into one of the rocking...