Eugene O'Neill: A Documentary Film            
Saturday, March 4, 8 pm
Jackson Hall - The Forum@MC - A new free series
Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts
University of California, Davis

Admission: A free, ticketed event. Tickets may be reserved at Mondavi Center Box Office (it is anticipated there will be ample tickets available at the door)

Post event Q&A: Director Ric Burns and acclaimed O'Neill biographers Arthur and Barbara Gelb, onstage following the screening

The Essential Stuff

An advance screening of a new documentary film on playwright Eugene O'Neill, one of America's greatest literary geniuses, will kick off The Forum@MC, a new series of free lectures at the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis.  Eugene O'Neill: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns, which features performances by Al Pacino, Liam Neeson, and others, will be shown in its entirety, with a question-and-answer session with Burns and acclaimed O'Neill biographers Arthur and Barbara Gelb to follow.

Admission is free of charge, but tickets are required, and can be requested from the Mondavi Center Ticket Office at 530.754.ARTS (2787) or online at MondaviArts.org.  Mondavi Center anticipates that tickets will be available the day of the event. 

This is a free, ticketed event; tickets are available for this performance!

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Experiencing Eugene O'Neill

Go Deeper:
A Nobel Prize winner and a four-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Eugene O'Neill (1888-1954) is generally regarded as America's premiere playwright.  A bold experimenter and restless visionary, O'Neill wrote works including Anna Christie, The Hairy Ape, Desire Under the Elms, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night and others regarded among the finest drama of the 20th century.  Scorning the commercial dictates of popular theater, O'Neill produced probing plays of great emotional complexity that are often cited as the foundation of serious American theater.

Strongly influenced by the dramatic realism of Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg, O'Neill often drew themes and ideas from his own difficult family life.  Born in a Broadway hotel room, the playwright was the son of James O'Neill, one of the 19th century's most popular actors, and spent the first seven years of his life touring with his father's company.  His mother was a morphine addict, and his own problems with alcohol contributed to failures as a student at Princeton University and Harvard. 

O'Neill worked a variety of jobs, from sailor to journalist to prospector, before both his first marriage and his health broke down in 1912.  Returning to live with his parents, he decided to become a playwright, and 1916 saw the first production of his work, Bound East for Cardiff.  He won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1920 for Beyond the Horizon, sparking a period of intense creativity.  Living in France's Loire Valley and in Danville, California (from 1937 to 1944), O'Neill wrote prolifically, and produced works of enduring quality and interest.  His later years were marked by estrangement from his family and the literary community, and many of his final, greatest plays were not produced until after his death in Boston in 1953.

The Documentary Film:
It runs in the family: Ric and brother Ken Burns are driving forces in the world of contemporary documentary filmmaking. Ric Burns' film, co-written with Arthur and Barbara Gelb, is both a biography of O'Neill and a moving meditation on loss and redemption, family, and memory.  It is an exploration of the masterpieces created during O'Neill's final years, including The Ice Man Cometh and Hard Day's Journey Into Night, which are brought to life in scenes performed especially for the film by actors including Al Pacino, Zoe Caldwell, Christopher Plummer, Liam Neeson, and Robert Sean Leonard.  The documentary features interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, Tony Award-winning dramatist John Guare, Academy Award-winning director Sidney Lumet, actors Zoe Caldwell and Jason Robards, and others.  The film is approximately two hours long, and will be aired on PBS's American Experience series, premiering March 27