The Provincetown Players was a collective of artists, writers, intellectuals, and amateur theater enthusiasts. Under the leadership of the husband and wife team of George Cram “Jig” Cook and

Susan Glaspell Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 28, 1948) was an American playwright, novelist, journalist and actress. With her husband George Cram Cook, she founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company. First know ...

from Iowa, the Players produced two seasons in

Provincetown Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...

, Massachusetts (1915 and 1916) and six seasons in New York City, between 1916 and 1922. The company's founding has been called "the most important innovative moment in American theatre." Its productions helped launch the careers of

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earli ...

and

, and ushered American theatre into the Modern era.

Founding in Provincetown

The Provincetown Players began in July 1915.

Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, in the United States. A small coastal resort town with a year-round population of 3,664 as of the 2020 United States Census, Province ...

had become a popular summer outpost for numerous artists and writers, bohemian residents from

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

, New York. On July 22 a group of friends who were disillusioned by the commercialism of Broadway created an evening's entertainment by staging two one-act plays. ''Constancy'' by

Neith Boyce Neith Boyce (March 21, 1872 – December 2, 1951) was an American novelist, journalist, and theatre artist. Much of Boyce’s earlier work was published with help from her parents, Mary and Henry Harrison Boyce. Neith Boyce later co-founded the ...

and ''Suppressed Desires'' by

and George Cram Cook were performed at the home of

Hutchins Hapgood Hutchins Harry Hapgood (1869–1944) was an American journalist, author and anarchist. Life and career Hapgood was born to Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1836–1917) and Fanny Louise (Powers) Hapgood (1846–1922) and grew up in Alton, Illinois, ...

and Neith Boyce. The evening was a success and an additional performance was organized.

Mary Heaton Vorse Mary Heaton Vorse (October 11, 1874 – June 14, 1966) was an American journalist and novelist. She established her reputation as a journalist reporting the labor protests of a largely female and immigrant workforce in the east-coast textile indus ...

donated the use of the fish house on Lewis Wharf, where a makeshift stage was assembled. The two one-acts which had been presented at the Hapgood home were restaged in August, and a second bill of two new plays was presented in September: ''Change Your Style'' by George Cram Cook and ''Contemporaries'' by Wilbur Daniel Steele. They were excited about their "creative collective".Sarlós, Robert K. (1984)
"The Provincetown Players' Genesis or Non-Commercial Theatre on Commercial Streets"
''Journal of American Culture'', Vol. 7, Issue 3 (Fall 1984), pp. 65–70 Enthusiasm for the theatrical experiment in Provincetown continued over the winter of 1915–16 and the group planned a second season at Lewis Wharf. The plays were funded in part by a subscription campaign in which Cook described the aim of the group: “to give American playwrights a chance to work out their ideas in freedom." The second season introduced

Eugene O’Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

and his play ''Bound East for Cardiff'' as well as ''Trifles'' by

New York City

In September 1916 before leaving Massachusetts, the group met and, led by Cook and John Reed, formally organized "The Provincetown Players," voting to produce a season in New York City. Jig Cook was elected president of the newly constituted organization. The Players were founded to “establish a stage where playwrights of sincere, poetic, literary and dramatic purpose could see their plays in action and superintend their production without submitting to the commercial managers' interpretation of public taste.” On September 19, 1916, Cook rented a theater at 139 Macdougal Street in New York, which the Players dubbed “The Playwright’s Theater.” The Players developed a pattern of producing a "bill" of three new one-act plays every two weeks over a 21-week season. The first New York season in 1916–17 presented nine “bills” between November and March, including three new O’Neill plays, which included a revival of ''Bound East for Cardiff''. Other plays were by

Floyd Dell Floyd James Dell (June 28, 1887 – July 23, 1969) was an American newspaper and magazine editor, literary critic, novelist, playwright, and poet. Dell has been called "one of the most flamboyant, versatile and influential American Men of Letters ...

, Rita Wellman and Harry Kemp. A significant addition to the Players was director Nina Moise, a trained actor and young director who began helping the Players with their staging and interpretation of plays in 1917. In the 1917–18 season Edna St. Vincent Millay and her sister Norma joined the Players as actors. The season featured three new plays by O'Neill, three by Glaspell, and their first full-length play, ''The Athenian Women,'' written by George Cram Cook. In the 1918–19 season The Players moved to 133 Macdougal Street and called the theater "The Provincetown Playhouse". The 1918–1919 season included ''The Princess Marries the Page'' by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The Players were founded as an amateur group, and initially did not allow critics to attend to review their plays, hoping to protect their experimental nature. But during their first New York season, some members began voice their desire to see their work toward becoming professional actors. Finally they voted to allow critics tickets to performances, even though some founding members considered this means of evaluation to be the criteria of commercial theater, and therefore a violation of the mission of The Players. At the end of the third New York season, Cook and Glaspell decided to step away from the Players for a year-long sabbatical (1919–20). During the sabbatical the theater's day-to-day management was overseen by business manager Mary Eleanor Fitzgerald, known to all as "Fitzi," and James Light. The 1919–20 season ("The Season of Youth") included three plays by

Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist litera ...

, two by Eugene O’Neill, ''Aria Da Capo'' by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and ''Three Travelers Watch A Sunrise'' by

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

Success and change

Eugene O'Neill's ''

The Emperor Jones ''The Emperor Jones'' is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed, ...

'' opened the 1920–21 season and was an overnight hit. The cast was led by Charles Gilpin, who was the first African-American professional actor to perform with a primarily white company in the United States.

Alexander Woollcott Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American drama critic and commentator for ''The New Yorker'' magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio p ...

in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said that ''The Emperor Jones'' was an "extraordinarily striking and dramatic study of panic fear.” O’Neill's play “reinforces the impression that for strength and originality he has no rival among American writers for the stage.” Cook used the production of ''The Emperor Jones'' to advocate for a striking scenic innovation, spending over 500 dollars on the set alone – the construction of a dome in the Playhouse modeled on the scenic element used in art theaters in Europe. The dome, (''kuppelhorizont'') used a “combination of vertical and horizontal curvatures” as a reflective surface to represent the horizon and create a greater sense of depth than a flat cyclorama. ''The Emperor Jones'' ran for 200 performances. After the attention ''The Emperor Jones'' received, along with a Broadway transfer of the play, some members of the Players began to see their highest goal as gaining commercial and critical success. The mission of the Players became more clouded when subsequent plays were transferred to Broadway, though less successfully, and the drain of casting multiple productions as well as continuing their work on Macdougal street drained them. Commercial success eroded the collective spirit of experimentation on which the Provincetown Players had been formed. As a result of the growing pressure to succeed in commercial terms, and with no new playwrights coming to them to be developed, Cook and Glaspell asked to incorporate the "Provincetown Players" so as to protect the name. They left in 1922 to travel to Greece after O'Neill fired Cook as the director of his play ''The Hairy Ape'' and they felt he was using the Players as a try-out for its Broadway run without apology. Though the 1921–22 season finished without the public knowing that Cook and Glaspell had left, the Players announced a suspension of their 1922–23 season. Though Cook wrote his subscribers promising a season beginning in October 1923, he and Glaspell remained in Greece, and the original Provincetown Players did not produce again. In 1923 the primary members of the Provincetown Players’ corporation voted to formally disband. Jig Cook had already written to the company, before he left in 1922, that they had given “the theater they had loved a good death.”

Continuing the name

After the formal dissolution of the Players, several associates sought to create a producing organization that would carry on their success and use the Players' name. When Jig Cook died in Greece January 1924,

could not prevent creation of a new producing organization, but she fought to protect the name "The Provincetown Players" from the new partnership. In January 1924, the new group premiered ''The Spook Sonata'' (a translation of

August Strindberg Johan August Strindberg (, ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than sixty p ...

’s ''Ghost Sonata''). It marked a new phase in the life of the company that was still identified in the popular imagination as the Provincetown Players. A triumvirate:

Robert Edmond Jones Robert Edmond Jones (December 12, 1887 – November 26, 1954) was an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer. He is credited with incorporating the new stagecraft into the American drama. His designs sought to integrate scenic elem ...

Kenneth Macgowan Kenneth Macgowan (November 30, 1888 – April 27, 1963) was an American film producer. He won an Academy Award for Best Color Short Film for ''La Cucaracha'' (1934), the first live-action short film made in the three-color Technicolor process. Bi ...

and Eugene O’Neill directed the organization; it operated as “The Experimental Theatre, Inc.” and produced in the “

Provincetown Playhouse The Provincetown Playhouse is a historic theatre at 133 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and West 4th Streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named for the Provincetown Players, who converted the former ...

.” The Provincetown operated under the triumvirate for two seasons. But Macgowan allowed that “the Provincetown Players of the great days. . . ended when Jig Cook went to Greece and Eugene O’Neill went to Broadway.” The triumvirate dissolved after two years. The “Third Provincetown” operated from 1925–1929. The theater continued to wrestle with the tension between process and product. The original Provincetown Players were founded on ideals of simplicity, experimentation, and group process. Success, on the other hand, relied on finished products and expansion. The Fall

1929 stock market crash The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...

abruptly added to their burdens. After the final performance of ''Winter Bound'' by Thomas H. Dickinson on December 14, 1929, the theater company closed for good.

Role of women in the Provincetown Players

Women were a prominent part of the Provincetown Players. Susan Glaspell and Jig Cook were partners in organizing the Players. Neith Boyce and Glaspell (who co-wrote a play with her husband Cook) wrote the first two plays performed by the Players. Mary Heaton Vorse donated the use of the fish house on Lewis Wharf as the Players' first home for two summers in Provincetown. Similarly, the Players gave voice to women artists. Of the forty-seven playwrights whose work was produced by the Provincetown Players, seventeen were women. Prominent among these playwrights were Glaspell (who later won a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

for drama in 1931 for her play, ''

Alison's House ''Alison's House'' is a drama in three acts by American playwright Susan Glaspell. It was first produced at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre on 14th Street, New York, on 1 December 1930, where it was given 25 performances in the regula ...

''); Boyce,

Louise Bryant Louise Bryant (December 5, 1885 – January 6, 1936) was an American feminist, political activist, and journalist best known for her sympathetic coverage of Russia and the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of November 1917. Born Anna ...

, Rita Wellman, Mary Carolyn Davies, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. In addition to challenging the artistic status quo of Broadway, the Provincetown Players gave opportunities to women and challenged the sexual segregation of commercial theater.

Little Theatre movement

The

Little Theatre Movement As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dr ...

in America came about in reaction to the tepid entertainment offered by the commercial theater. In an effort to appeal to a mass audience, Broadway took few chances with untested plays and playwrights. The Little Theatres provided an outlet for American playwrights, and stories of social significance. They were predominantly performed in a social realist style.

The Players and Greenwich Village

The anti-commercial impulse, emphasis on artistic expression, and collective decision-making of the Provincetown Players were manifestations of the bohemian spirit of Greenwich Village of the 1910s. The Players were founded from a network of friendships among artists, intellectuals and radicals.

Mabel Dodge Mabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan (pronounced ''LOO-hahn''; née Ganson; February 26, 1879 – August 13, 1962) was a wealthy American patron of the arts, who was particularly associated with the Taos art colony. Early life Mabel Ganson was the heir ...

, who hosted the most celebrated literary salon of the period, was the former lover of founding member of the Players Jack Reed (actor). Their love affair was the thinly disguised subject matter of the first Players production, ''Constancy''.

Max Eastman Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical ...

, editor of the radical magazine ''

The Masses ''The Masses'' was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the United States from 1911 until 1917, when federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was ...

'', also participated early on with the Players; his wife at the time, Ida Rauh, became one of their most important actresses, whose work with the Players continued after their split in early 1917. The first New York theater for the Provincetown Players was at 139 Macdougal Street, two doors down from the Liberal Club at 135 Macdougal, a gathering place for young radicals.

Artists affiliated with the Provincetown Players

Theodore Dreiser Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (; August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm mora ...

, Edna St. Vincent Millay,

, John Reed,

Marjory Lacey-Barker Lena Madesin Phillips (September 15, 1881 - May 22, 1955) was a lawyer and clubwoman from Nicholasville, Kentucky, who founded the National Business and Professional Women's Clubs in 1919. She enlarged her circle, traveling also to Europe, and in ...

Cleon Throckmorton Cleon Francis "Throck" Throckmorton (October 8, 1897 – October 23, 1965) was an American painter, theatrical designer, producer, and architect. During the early 1920s, Throckmorton resided in Washington, D.C., where he created sets for stage pr ...

, and

Charles Demuth Charles Henry Buckius Demuth (November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935) was an American painter who specialized in watercolors and turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism. "Search the history of Ame ...

.TheArtStory.org

Gallery

File:Bound East at 139 Macdougal Setting Up.png, Setting up the stage for ''Bound East for Cardiff'', Fall 1916. Photo shows

O'Neill The O'Neill dynasty ( Irish: ''Ó Néill'') are a lineage of Irish Gaelic origin, that held prominent positions and titles in Ireland and elsewhere. As kings of Cenél nEógain, they were historically the most prominent family of the Northe ...

on the ladder,

Cook Cook or The Cook may refer to: Food preparation * Cooking, the preparation of food * Cook (domestic worker), a household staff member who prepares food * Cook (professional), an individual who prepares food for consumption in the food industry * ...

to the far right. File:All God's Chillun Got Wings.png, Scene in '' All God's Chillun Got Wings'' in which

Paul Robeson Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional American football, football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplish ...

kissed

Mary Blair Mary Blair (born Mary Browne Robinson; October 21, 1911 – July 26, 1978) was an American artist, animator, and designer. She was prominent in producing art and animation for The Walt Disney Company, drawing concept art for such films as ''A ...

's hand, attracting national interest. File:Sg12th.jpg,

, playwright and one of the founders of the Provincetown Players.

References

Notes Further reading * Beard, Rick, and Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, eds. ''Greenwich Village: Culture and Counteculture''. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP for The Museum of the City of New York, 1993. * Egan, Leona Rust. ''Provincetown as Stage''. Orleans, Mass.: Parnassus Imprints, 1994. * Gewirtz, Arthur, and James J. Kolb, eds. ''Experimenters, Rebels, and Disparate Voices: The Theater of the 1920s Celebrates American Diversity''. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003. * Glaspell, Susan. ''The Road to the Temple''. New York: Frederick A. Stokes and Company, 1927. (A posthumous biography of Cook.) * Kenton, Edna. ''The Provincetown Players and the Playwrights' Theatre, 1915-1922''. McFarland & Company, 2004. * Murphy, Brenda. "Provincetown Players and The Culture of Modernity". Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2005.

External links

eoneill.comprovincetownplayhouse.com

Minute book of the Provincetown Players, Inc, 1916 Sep 04-1923 Nov 16
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

{{authority control Theatre companies in Massachusetts Provincetown, Massachusetts Defunct Theatre companies in New York City