“O’Neill Effect” Felt As New Plays Open Coast to Coast and in London

Waterford, CT, February 27, 2001 – An extraordinary number of plays and musicals first seen by audiences as script-in-hand performances at the O’Neill Theater Center are premiering on theater’s leading stages around the country and across the Atlantic. Five – Keith Reddin’s FRAME 312, Deborah Baley Brevoort’s THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE; Jerome Hairston’s A.M. SUNDAY; Michael Pace, Rob Preston and Walter Bobbie’s THE ROAD TO HOLLYWOOD and Adam Rapp’s FINER NOBLE GASES – will receive world premieres over the next few months.

This follows the recent premieres of four other O’Neill projects – BLACK SHEEP by Lee Blessing at Florida Stage, PORK PIE by Michael Genet at the Denver Center Theatre Company, THE SCREAMS OF KITTY GENOVESE by David Simpatico (libretto) and Will Todd (music) at The Boston Conservatory and THE SQUARE ROOT OF MINUS ONE by Peter Morris at The Market Theater in Cambridge. In addition, Lee Blessing’s play THIEF RIVER, which premiered at the Signature Theatre Company last May, opened at the Guthrie Theatre on February 15.

All of these projects were developed in one of the O’Neill’s theater advancement programs prior to their first full production. The O’Neill Playwrights Conference (OPC) chooses playwrights for a month-long residency at the O’Neill. Surrounded by other writers, directors, designers and actors they undergo a four-day rehearsal process culminating in two staged readings of their work. Writers, composers and lyricists chosen for the O’Neill Music Theater Conference (OMTC) spend up to three weeks rehearsing their projects and perform them as many as five times throughout the rehearsal process in one of the O’Neill’s four performance spaces.

FRAME 312 (OPC ’01) opens at London’s Donmar Warehouse on March 14 and runs through March 30 as part of the Donmar’s 2002 American Imports Season. Playwright Keith Reddin previously developed his play LIFE AND LIMB at the Playwrights Conference (as THE LIMB KING, in 1983) and has attended the Conference several times as an actor. FRAME 312 centers on Lynette, former secretary at LIFE magazine, who in 1963 witnessed a piece of film footage that could alter history. Thirty years later, on her birthday, she begins to tell the story to her grown-up children.

A.M. SUNDAY (OPC’00), by Jerome Hairston is a portrait of a family confronting where they stand in one another’s worlds. It is the story of an interracial couple at a turning point in their relationship, and also the story of their two sons. A.M. SUNDAY will open at the Human Festival of New Plays on March 16 and run through April 2.

FINER NOBLE GASES (OPC ’01) is an existential play about the inert occupants of an East Village apartment – members of a band once called “Lester’s Surprise” who become dependent on pills and television for stimulus but long to feel something, to be part of something, or to be of use. Playwright Adam Rapp has participated in the Playwrights Conference twice before, for GHOSTS IN THE COTTONWOODS (OPC ’96) and TRUEBLINKA (OPC ’97). FINER NOBLE GASES opens at the Humana Festival March 8 and runs through April 3.

THE ROAD TO HOLLYWOOD (OMTC ’01), by Michael Pace (book, music & lyrics), Rob Preston (music & lyrics) and Walter Bobbie (book) is a musical valentine to the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope-Dorothy Lamour road pictures of the 1940’s. Full of Big Band swing music, plot twists and “old-fashioned” musical comedy, this show will premiere at Goodspeed Musicals between August 8 and September 1.

THE WOMEN OF LOCKERBIE (OPC ’99), by Deborah Baley Brevoort, has received recognition from both the Kennedy Center’s Fund for New American Plays and the Onassis International Cultural Competition. In LOCKERBIE, a mother from New Jersey roams the hills of Scotland, searching for her son’s remains that were lost in a plane crash. There, she meets the Women of Lockerbie, who are fighting to get the clothing of the victims released by the U.S. government. Determined to convert an act of hatred into an act of love, the women want to wash the clothes of the dead and return them to the victim's families. Women’s Project & Productions in New York will give this play its world premiere next fall.

Further on the horizon, NINE (OMTC 1979), by Arthur Kopit (book), Mario Fratti (book) and Maury Yeston (music & lyrics) will have its first Broadway revival in 2003, produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company.

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 and based in Waterford CT, is dedicated to the advancement of new work for the theater and creates and operates programs which complement that goal. These include the Puppetry Conference (June 5 – 16) Playwrights Conference (June 24 – July 28), Critics Institute (June 30 – July 13 & July 14 – 27), Music Theater Conference (July 29 – August 18) and the National Theater Institute, a college-accredited training program for theater artists. The O’Neill also owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage, childhood home of America’s only Nobel Prize-winning playwright, Eugene O’Neill, and holds an annual celebration honoring the life and works of its namesake every October.