Michael Douglas (l) and Phillip Sterling, SUMMERTREE by Ron Cowen (OPC ’67)

During the fall and winter of 1964-65, I had been using my tenuous contacts from television to get theater people involved, particularly trying to interest such people as Jose Quintero (a renowned O’Neill director) and others associated with O’Neill productions. TV Director David Pressman introduced me to David Hays, designer of the original 1956 production of LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT.

(l to r) Richard Barr, George White and Edward Albee at the 1967 Playwrights Conference

As I contemplated what theatrical avenues to pursue, the idea of doing a season of O’Neill plays was daunting. We had no theater, had not begun to renovate the property, and as I was still in my 20’s, I had few contacts and meager financial resources upon which to call. The best course seemed to be Marc Smith’s idea of holding a playwrights conference. We had to first identify the playwrights, then find the wherewithal to support the venture. In the former case I once again called on my television acquaintances as well as Dean Canfield. Two key people were William Darrid, then an executive at MCA (Music Corporation of America) and Audrey Wood (the most powerful playwright’s agent in America, who represented, among others, William lnge, Robert Anderson, and Tennessee Williams). They in turn led me to two new playwrights organizations, The New Dramatists Committee and The Van Dam Street Playwrights Lab, just then funded by Edward Albee and producer Richard Barr with a portion of the profits from WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?. From these groups, plus a few recent fellow graduates from the Yale School of Drama, we invited twenty playwrights to come to Waterford for the first week of August in 1965. The plan was that they would meet with noted designers, directors, producers, actors, and critics and discuss their needs and relationships to these various theatrical disciplines. It was my job to invite and secure the panelists and raise the necessary funding.

Cash was virtually non-existent, so my wife Betsy and I called upon our friends in the Waterford-New London area to give bed and breakfast to the playwrights for a week. I cashed in an insurance policy ($1,200) which secured transportation to and from New York and paid for a week of lunches, while different neighborhoods in town organized evening meals for the conference participants. On August 4th, the entire complement arrived. Though the “mansion” was almost unusable (the ceiling had fallen in when we tested the plumbing), there were rooms in which to have temporary offices. Key meetings were held in the sunken garden under a gigantic ancient copper beech tree.