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Our History
From its beginnings in the mid-1960s, the O'Neill Theater Center wanted critics to play a role at its annual Playwrights Conference. But what should that role be? Founder George White's first idea was to ask established critics to take the stage after the performance to discuss the play with the audience. Unfortunately, the critics thought that they had been invited to review the play, which they did, sometimes in withering terms. This experiment generated more heat than light. The next step was to invite O'Neill playwrights to sit down in private with critics the morning after the show and be instructed as to the value of their scripts. This practice was discontinued after one playwright trained a revolver -- fortunately unloaded -- on his judges. His judges: therein lies the problem. Theater people in those days saw "the critics" primarily as a power bloc who could make or break a show. Yet the O 'Neill was supposed to be a theater laboratory. How could a final verdict be delivered on a play that was still in process? A hanging judge had no place there. But wait a minute: in a laboratory setting, could the term "theater criticism" be redefined? Could it be re-translated, just for a few weeks, to mean an extension of the shoptalk that went on all day long at the O'Neill? (What's the arc of the story? Should there be more of a bridge between Scene One and Scene Two?) If that was theater criticism, everyone at the O'Neill was already guilty of it. Bringing aboard a contingent of theater journalists who wanted to develop their powers of analysis and description in private suddenly seemed quite logical. While these visiting journalists might not qualify as colleagues, they couldn't honestly be seen as the enemy either. Like the O' Neill's playwrights, they too were writers in process. So -- under the guidance of Norman Nadel, Judith Crist and the late Ernest Schier, former critic of the Philadelphia Bulletin -- evolved The O'Neill's National Critics Institute. Download admission and tuition grant applications today! | ||
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