ABSTRACT
Although the Provincetown Players originated in George Cram Cook’s ardent yearning to return to the Greek Dionysian roots of theater and so to create a new communal spirit in America, he also aspired to give American playwrights an opportunity to stage their plays. And yet, the prevailing opinion on the work of the Players, based largely on the autobiography of one of their members, Hutchins Hapgood – a journalist and close friend of Glaspell and Cook – has tended to foreground their “amateurish, rebellious and informal spirit” (Sarlós 1982: 6). Hapgood saw their beginnings as a response to the “negative forces” of the First World War, and also as a conscious attempt to solve the larger social problems through a refreshingly idealistic conviction that self-understanding and honesty will lead to the “deeper culture” necessary for true progress (Hapgood 1939: 393). Robert Károly Sarlós, whose 1982 study of the Players is still the most complete history of their adventure, admits that “the plays were first thought of as a profoundly therapeutic party-game for a small, close-knit group,” but he hastens to add that “the idea no sooner emerged than it materialized in the form of scripts” (Sarlós 1982: 14). Indeed, the first two plays, Glaspell and Cook’s Suppressed Desires and Neith Boyce’s Constancy, deal with ideas and incidents that formed parts of the everyday lives of the group. The later plays also served to release tensions through comedy or drama but, at the same time, they were frequently the work of writers fully committed to their craft, as was Susan Glaspell.
