Monte Cristo Cottage Opens For Season on Memorial Day Weekend
AH, WILDERNESS! Family Celebration Set For July 1

May 24, 2006

Amy Sullivan, Executive Director of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, announced today that The Monte Cristo Cottage, boyhood home of Eugene O'Neill as well as the setting for two of his most famous plays, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and AH, WILDERNESS!, will open to the public this Saturday, May 27 from noon to 4:00 pm and on Sunday, May 28 from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. It will be closed on Memorial Day. The Cottage, home to the O'Neill family and America's only Nobel Prize-winning playwright, Eugene O'Neill, will be open Thursdays through Sundays until Labor Day. Hours are Thursdays – Saturdays from noon to 4:00 pm and Sundays from 1:00 pm until 3:00 pm. The Cottage will be open on weekends after Labor Day through mid-October.

"We are delighted to open the Monte Cristo Cottage for tours again this summer," said Ms. Sullivan. "Our docent staff, led by co-curators Sally Pavetti and Lois McDonald, is ready to welcome visitors to Eugene O'Neill's boyhood home, a setting that deeply impacted his early years, and later informed his Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning plays."

A special celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the setting of AH, WILDERNESS!, O'Neill's only comedy, will be held at the Monte Cristo Cottage on Saturday, July 1. It will feature family activities and games, beginning at 10:00 a.m. The day will feature face painting, a costume parade for children and outdoor games, with a lunchtime performance by the United States Coast Guard Band Brass Quintet and readings from AH, WILDERNESS! Free tours of the Monte Cristo Cottage will be offered throughout the day, from 11:00 am until 4:00 pm.

The Monte Cristo Cottage, a National Historic Landmark property, is located at 325 Pequot Avenue, New London. The Cottage is named after the role of "The Count of Monte Cristo" made famous by Eugene O'Neill's father, the actor James O'Neill. The Cottage was built in the 1840s and was purchased by the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in 1974 to serve as a cultural resource, featuring exhibition space about the life and work of New London's most famous son and the world's most produced playwright; as well as a center for the study of O'Neill and his work.

Extensively restored in 2005 with a generous grant from the State of Connecticut, the Cottage was featured prominently in Ric Burns' recent biography "Eugene O'Neill" for PBS, and has become a destination for actors and directors from around the world who are researching O'Neill's plays.

General admission to the Monte Cristo Cottage is $7 per person ($5 for seniors and students) and $5 per person for groups of ten or more. All events on July 1 will be free to the public, including tours of the Cottage.

The Monte Cristo Cottage is also seeking volunteers interested in training as docents. For more information call (860) 443-0051.

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964 and based in Waterford CT, is dedicated to the advancement of new voices and new work for the theater and creates and operates programs which complement that goal. These include the Puppetry Conference, National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, Cabaret Conference and the National Theater Institute, a college-accredited training program for theater artists. The more than one thousand plays and musicals developed and premiered at the O'Neill include such prominent works as John Guare's THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES, Wendy Wasserstein's UNCOMMON WOMEN AND OTHERS, August Wilson's MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM, FENCES and THE PIANO LESSON, Lee Blessing's A WALK IN THE WOODS, NINE by Arthur Kopit, Mario Fratti and Maury Yeston and AVENUE Q by Jeff Whitty, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx, recipient of the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2004.