Class Dramatic Reading Workshop IV

At the beginning of the century XX, Strindberg delimited a new space for the dramatic form, baptizing it "intimate theatre". This intimate theatre has since then become a point of convergence for the dramatic writings of our time. "To radiate, the theatre needs a closed space. But this narrowness of the theatre is susceptible to infinite dilation, it has the vocation of containing a whole world", says Jean-Pierre Sarrazac. The present curricular unit explores this "dramaturgy of subjectivity" of which Strindberg was the forerunner, a dramaturgy that puts the intimate and the cosmic, the self and the world in tension, and which has in "Long Day's Journey Into Night", by Eugene O'Neill, one of its exponents. A close reading of this dramatic testament will make it possible to ponder the spectacularity of the intimate and the process through which autobiographical elements acquire dramatic form, giving rise to a "dramaturgy in the first person".

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1. Intimate theaters 1.1. Strindberg: the intimate as a "watchword" 1.2. Autobiography, 'récit de vie' and the poetics of modern drama 1.3. Examples 1.3.1. The Pelican, Strindberg 1.3.2. The Human Voice, Cocteau 1.3.3. Krapp's Last Recording, Beckett 2. Eugene O'Neill and his legacies 2.1. Precursor and great classic of American theatre 2.2. O'Neill and the European theatrical tradition 2.3. The familiar topic in O'Neill's dramaturgy 2.4. Dramatic writing, or "How literary does a dramatic work need to be?" (Bloom) 3. Long Journey into the Night 3.1. Text-testament written in "tears and blood" 3.2. The notion of "creative autobiography" 3.3. The question of time: one day, a lifetime 3.3.1. Paradoxical temporality: James and Mary 3.3.2. Opening and closing time: Jamie and Edmund 3.3.3. Artificial paradises and the abolition of time 3.4. Tragedy and melodrama 3.5. House/theatre antithesis 3.6. Symbology: the fog, the spare room 3.7. Will-power and tragic necessity 3.8. The mystique of paradise lost

Collective reading of the proposed texts. Plight of the issues raised and their submission to debate. Recourse to supplementary sources (other dramatic texts, films, records of performances). Lectures by the teacher to frame or summarize the activities described.

Bogard, Travis/Bryer, Jackson, (ed.) – Selected Letters of Eugene O'Neill. New York: Limelight, 1994. Bloom, Harold (ed.) – Eugene O'Neill. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007. Bloom, Harold (ed.) – Eugene O'Neill's “Long Day's Journey Into Night”. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1987. Diggins, John Patrick –  Eugene O'Neill's America: Desire Under Democracy. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. O’Neill, Eugene – "Longa Jornada para a Noite". Tradução Luísa Costa Gomes. Porto/V.N. Famalicão: Teatro Nacional São João/Edições Húmus, 2023 Sarrazac, Jean-Pierre – Théâtres Intimes. Paris: Actes Sud, 1989. Sheaffer, Louis – O'Neill: Son and Playwright: Volume I. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. Sheaffer, Louis – O'Neill: Son and Artist: Volume II. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.