Archive - 2005
American Theatre and Drama Society Conference
University of
Kansas, Lawrence KS
March 3-5, 2005
Writing, Teaching, Performing America
Susan Glaspell: Playwright Shaping/Transforming American
Identity and Drama
Friday, March 4 2005, Session #17
Session Chair: Barbara Ozieblo (University of Mlaga)
"Revisions of Gender and the Lesbian Continuum: Relations Among Women in the Life and Dramatic Works of Susan Glaspell," Cheryl Black (University of Missouri)
"Woman's Honor or Virtue Unrewarded: Glaspell's Parodic Challenge to Ideologies of Sexual Conduct in the Early Decades of the 20th Century," Sharon Friedman (New York University)
"Glaspell and the Discourse of American Taste," J. Ellen Gainor (Cornell University)
"Drama and Cultural Pluralism in the America of Susan Glaspell's Inheritors," Noelia Hernando-Real (University Autnoma de Madrid)
"Glaspell's Modernist New Woman in The Verge and Other Plays," Barbara Ozieblo (University of Mlaga)
"Susan Glaspell and the Politics of Performing Women," Monica Stufft (University of California, Berkeley)
The Susan Glaspell Society panel at the ATDS/University of Kansas Conference had a good audience and panelists gave papers that opened up new topics for Glaspell research. Cheryl began the session with an investigation of the lesbian continuum in Glaspell's writing, showing how a recognition of this continuum can provide us with new insights into her work and with an understanding of the invention of compulsory hetereosexuality as a political and economic institution in American life. Sharon examined Glaspell's use of parody in Woman's Honor, and argued that it allowed her to think backward at the same time that she thinks forward with ironic critical distance. Ellen Gainor explored the conflicting categories of the commercial and the purely artistic, or the modernist and the avant-garde as applied to Glaspell's fiction and plays and the consequences of using such labels. Noelia deconstructed Inheritors from the critical stance provided by cultural pluralism and so was able to show how Glaspell rethinks the concept of American identity in this play in a way that can only be labeled as radical. Basia (Barbara) looked at Glaspell's relationship with her audience in Chains of Dew and The Verge, indicating that the different types of protagonist and the different tone of the two plays responds to an attempt to write for Broadway. The session ended with Monica who explored the communities of women that the theatre brought together, and the new set of possibilities and material and ideological constraints that work for groups such as the Provincetown Players or the Ziegfield Girls offered women.
On Friday evening there was a staged reading of Inheritors, in a version that had been cut and prepared by Iris Fischer, and directed by Erin Jones. Ellen Gainor read Olivia Morton and Isabel Fejevary and, in spite of an on-coming cold, was magnificent. We all agreed that hearing/seeing Inheritors gave us new insights into the play and emphasized its relevance to today's world and events. The SG Society web site provides this version of Inheritors, (see Inheritors page) making the abridged text available for future productions.
From left to right: Sharon
Friedman, Monica Stufft,
Barbara Ozieblo, Cheryl Black, Noelia Hernando-Real,
J. Ellen Gainor
The Susan Glaspell Society was listed as a conference sponsor in the conference program; SG Society members who participated in our panel covered the costs of the program for the reading of Inheritors.
American Literature
Association 16th Annual Conference
May 26-29, 2005
The Westin Copley, Boston, MA
The Susan Glaspell Society Sponsored Panel:
"Four Decades of Fiction at the
Forefront: Susan Glaspell's
Critique of American Ideology"
The panel, on Thursday, May 26 2005, Session 2-E 10:00-11:20, was chaired by Martha Carpentier and featured the following papers:
"Evaluating America: Cultural Commentary in Susan Glaspell's Magazine Fiction," by Colette Lindroth (Caldwell College)
"Susan Glaspell's Last Word on Democracy and War," by Mary E. Papke (University of Tennessee)
"Susan Glaspell and the Epistemological Crisis of Modernity:
Truth, Knowledge, and Art in Selected Novels," by Kristina Hinz-Bode
(Universitat Kassel)
The Eugene
O'Neill Society
6th International Conference
Provincetown, MA : Where it all began"
June 15-20, 2005
| Susan Glaspell and Eugene O'Neill
were brought together again in their beloved
Provincetown, as the Susan Glaspell Society participated
in the Eugene O'Neill Society's 6th International
Conference, June 15-20, 2005. The SG Society sponsored
a Glaspell keynote address by Linda Ben-Zvi, a panel, a
roundtable, and a wine-and-cheese reception following
the Provincetown Fringe Festival's second annual
Glaspell play-reading marathon. Many thanks to
O'Neill Society President Zander Brietzke and Vice
President Steven Bloom for their warm welcome and the
chance for scholars of these great playwrights to come
together. From left
to right, rear to front, by row:
|
 |
The Susan
Glaspell Society Sponsored
Roundtable and Panel
with Glaspell Keynote by Linda Ben-Zvi,
Friday June 17, 11:15:
"The Place of Provincetown in
Glaspell's Writing."
Susan Glaspell first came to Provincetown in the summer of 1912. When she married Jig Cook in 1913, they returned and the next year bought a house at 564 Commercial Street that was to be Glaspell's home for the rest of her life. In Provincetown she found a community of like-minded artists and writers who provided her with the intellectual support and understanding her Davenport, Iowa family and friends were unable to offer. It is, therefore, not surprising, that Provincetown, its setting, people, and history played a significant role in her writing. In her presentation Prof. Ben Zvi discussed Glaspell's life in Provincetown and the ways in which she depicts elements of the locale and specific residents in her plays and fiction.
 Glaspell's home in Provincetown. Saturday included a tour for SG Society members courtesy of current owners, Mr. and Mrs. William Teague. |
 The upstairs room in which Trifles was written, windows facing the bay. |
Provincetown Fringe Festival
Second Susan Glaspell Play-Reading Marathon,
Friday June 17, 1:00-5:00
Provincetown Fringe Festival director Karen Maloney (left), Judith Barlow, and
others read
Glaspell and Cook's Tickless Time. Suppressed Desires and Woman's
Honor were also read. Following
the readings, the SG Society hosted a wine-and-cheese gathering
at the Provincetown Inn.
|
Linda Ben-Zvi and Basia Ozieblo discuss the readings. |
Robert Sarlόs and son Tibor enjoy the readings. |
Session X:
New Approaches to Susan Glaspell's Theatre,
Saturday June 18, 2:45
Moderator: Martha C. Carpentier (Seton Hall University)
"Susan Glaspell's 'The Plea': Foreshadowing 'Trifles' and Concerns About Law and Justice," Patricia L. Bryan (University of North Carolina Law School)
"A Trembling Hand, a Rocking Chair, and a Rocking Chair or Kitchen Sink: Glaspell, O'Neill and their Early Dramatic Experiences," Lucia Sander (University of Brasilia)
"Woman's Honor and the Critique of Slander Per Se," J. Ellen Gainor (Cornell University)
"Writing for the Provincetown: Glaspell's 'New Woman' in Chains of Dew," Barbara Ozieblo (University of Malaga)
Roundtable III: Susan Glaspell in Context, Sunday June 19, 10:15
Moderator: Linda Ben-Zvi (Tel Aviv University)
Participants:
Sharon Friedman (New York
University)
Cheryl Black, (University of Missouri, Columbia)
J. Ellen Gainor (Cornell University)
Marcia Noe (University of Tennessee)
Barbara Ozieblo (University of Malaga)
Sally Heckel (independent filmmaker, New York City)
 |
 |
Sunday's roundtable discussion at the Pilgrim Monument museum featured (from left to right) Marcia Noe, Cheryl Black, Sally Heckel, moderator Linda Ben-Zvi, Ellen Gainor, Sharon Friedman, Basia Ozieblo. Animated discussion included panelists and audience members, and ranged from the future of Glaspell studies to the relationship of Susan Glaspell and husband Jig Cook.
2005 Events Featuring Susan Glaspell Hosted by WITASWAN
Chicago celebrated the 25th anniversary of the release of Sally Heckel's Oscar-nominated film version of "A Jury of Her Peers" in a big way in 2005. In March, Sally conducted a post-screening Q&A at the Chicago Cultural Center, followed by a lecture by Patricia Bryan & Tom Wolf (authors of Midnight Assassin: Murder in Americas Heartland).
Linda Ben-Zvi addresses the Illinois
Women's Press Association
on Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times
at the University Center, Chicago, Illinois
Weds, September 28, 2005, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Linda
Ben-Zvi read from her new biography
Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times, and also directed
students from De Paul University's Theatre School in selected
scenes from Inheritors, Suppressed Desires, and
Trifles.
Both events were organized by
WITASWAN (Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now), a
nationwide initiative dedicated to eliminating the Celluloid
Ceiling that continues to restrict opportunities for women
filmmakers, coordinated by SG Society member, Jan Lisa Huttner.
|
|
|
Linda
Ben-Zvi signing her biography of SG in Chicago.