ARTS ON THE LAKE
Lake Carmel Arts Center
640 Route 52
Kent Lakes, NY 10512

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845 228-AOTL (2685)

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Inheritors

Saturday, June 2, 2018 at 8:00 pm

 

Coming soon to Arts on the Lake

A new play from 1921 by Susan Glaspell

Part of Theatre Connections 2018

On the occasion of a 1983 revival by the Mirror Theater, Herbert Mitgang wrote in the NY Times:

SUSAN GLASPELL'S ''Inheritors'' is about protecting the environment from greedy real-estate developers, professors who give up their principles under pressure from administrators, dark-skinned people who are harassed because they are ''foreigners,'' the rights of Indians to their traditional lands, Federal vigilantes who exercise thought control and conscientious objectors who oppose war.

What's new about all this? The fact that the time is not America in the 1980's . . . but America in the early 1920's. It was first put on at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1921 and revived by Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Company in 1927.

While the above was written thirty-five years ago, "Inheritors" has become more relevant each year.

The Arts on the Lake cast includes Malachy Cleary, Malachy Cleary Jr., Alice Jankell, Collette O'Brien, Kevin O'Brien, Dennis Parlato, Olivia Schmidt, Julian Shatkin, James Shearwood, and Annmarie Baisley.

Directed by James Shearwood

[Pictured above, clockwise from top left: Parlato, Cleary, Schmidt, Jankell.]

About the Event

SUSAN GLASPELL (1876 – 1948) was an American playwright, novelist, journalist and actress, who with her husband George Cram Cook, founded the Provincetown Players, noted for discovering playwright Eugene O’Neill. During the Great Depression, she served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.

Glaspell is known to have composed nine novels, fifteen plays, over fifty short stories, and one biography. Often set in her native Midwest, these semi-autobiographical tales typically explore contemporary social issues, such as gender, ethics, and dissent, while featuring deep, sympathetic characters who make principled stands.

Even with the successes of her earlier fiction, Glaspell is most remembered for the twelve groundbreaking plays she submitted to the Provincetown Players. Her first play, "Trifles" (1916), based on a murder trial she had covered as a young reporter in Des Moines., has become one of the most anthologized works in American theatre history. In 1921 she completed "Inheritors"; following three generations of a pioneer family, it is perhaps America's first modern historical drama.


This project is made possible, in part, through the Putnam Arts Council’s Arts Link Grant Program, with public funds provided through the NY State Council on the Arts with support from Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NY State Legislature.