Eugene O’Neill’s masterful play
Long Day’s Journey Into Night,
made its world premier in 1956 in Stockholm, Sweden, under the direction of Jose Quintero. The play originally written (according to O’Neill) in 1939, was not to be published until twenty-five years after his death. It took O’Neill over two years to write the play, working on it mornings, afternoons, and evenings; sometimes crying as he wrote it. Carlotta, O’Neill’s wife stated that, “He had to write it because it was a thing that haunted him and he had to write it because it was a thing that haunted him and he had to forgive his family and himself.”
1
Three years after O’Neill’s death, his widow gave permission to have it published, but Random House felt that it was not right to publish it. Then the play was given to Yale University which published it in 1955.
2
The plays by Eugene O’Neill have been frequently performed in many countries of the world. Also, in our state, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf and the Yale Repertory Theater have produced
Ah, Wilderness
! and
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
. In 1986,
Long Day’s Journey
was revived in London, headed by Laurence Olivier and Constance Cummings. Sidney Lumet’s film version featured Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, and Jason Robards Jr. Also, in 1986, Broadway revived the play with Jack Lemmon playing Tyrone and Bethel Leslie playing Mary. And now
Ah, Wilderness
! and
Long Day’s Journey
, two of O’Neill’s New London plays, are being revived at Yale Repertory Theater as part of “Yale’s Eugene O’Neill Centennial Celebration.” Each time I have seen these two plays they seem to grow in richness, complexity and power.
A trip to New London, Connecticut to see O’Neill’s boyhood summer home, Monte Cristo Cottage, will increase the student’s desire to experience the play, help them to more fully understand it, and make this unit even more pleasurable. Edmund said about this home, “Well, it’s better than spending the summer in a New York hotel, isn’t it? And this town’s not so bad. I like it well enough. I suppose it’s the only home we’ve ever had.”
3
When visiting the cottage, guests are shown a video introducing the O’Neill family with dialogue from O’Neill’s plays spoken by Geraldine Fitzgerald, the actress. (In addition, showing the Sidney Lumet film by Films for the Humanities with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson and Jason Robards, Jr. can serve as a springboard for this unit, too.)
In
Long Day’s Journey,
the characters, the setting, events, experiences, and family relationships obviously have a strong autobiographical tone. In his dedication of the play to his wife, Carlotta, O’Neill wrote, “I give you the original script of the play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood. Your love enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play.” (L, Introduction). Although the play reveals O’Neill’s ideas, feelings and family conflicts, it is not just a “true confession” of his family’s everyday life. A playwright or author often chooses, changes and arranges his content in order to make his play more real, artistic, or dramatic. Similarly, Jean Chothia (in “Significant Form: Long Day’s Journey Into Night”) has written that autobiographical writing isn’t always accurately factual. “Although the personal nature of the material may well quicken the writer’s imagination it can only speak to the audience by the way it has been shaped by that imagination into an artistic form with its own unity, apart from that life.” (E, 85). At any rate, the play possesses the power to stimulate an emotional and intellectual response from even the most blase students. I will ask students to think about why it is so difficult and painful for authors to write about close family members and if they are able to view the close relationships realistically.
Most students will project themselves into the characters’ problems and conflicts because Mary, Tyrone, Jamie, and Edmund’s problems are ones that many families have to face today, such as—drug addiction, alcoholism, generational conflicts, mental and physical illness. The play will also evoke questions about the ways and purposes of life that students should think about. As students watch and perform scenes from the play, they will think about how Tyrone, Mary, Jamie, and Edmund are affected and influenced by their long day’s journey. Finally, the play will become part of the students’ life, enlarging it, commenting on it, enriching it, and asking it questions.
The curriculum unit should take four weeks to cover adequately and to experience deeply. Before writing a play, students should be asked to write vignettes, poems, short stories, and dialogue which express their own life experiences and which are engaging to read. With this practice, they will discover their own reality and their own distinct voice. After fully experiencing and dramatizing
Long Day’s Journey
, students will be asked to write an autobiographical play. Then, they can plan sets, costumes and production techniques for their plays. The plays can be performed within the classroom and they do not need to be very elaborate.
Long Day’s Journey
will come alive for the students through their active participation. The students should be fully involved; thus their learning will be active and participatory. I hope they will take risks and try things that may not work by testing the dialogue through action and the action by returning to the dialogue. I hope to demystify an intense and challenging play, to help my students feel the mounting tension and the increasing pain of the characters in the play.
This curriculum unit is most approachable for students in the eleventh and twelfth grade American literature class or in an advanced drama class that will include other classics such as:
The Night of the Iguana, A Streetcar Named Desire
,
The Glass Menagerie
,
Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Raisin in the Sun, Fences, The Emperor Jones, Strange Interlude, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Soldier’s Play,
and
Ah, Wilderness
! as a comparative group of American contemporary plays.
