Susan Glaspell is often called “The mother of American Drama” for her role in founding the Provincetown Players during the early 20th century. Glaspell’s play, ALISON’S HOUSE—inspired by the life of Emily Dickinson—was deemed the “rankest outsider” ever to win the Pulitzer Prize when it won American drama’s highest honor in 1931, and the backlash against it discouraged any New York revival until the Mint’s acclaimed production 70 years later.

Set on the last day of the 19th century, ALISON’S HOUSE takes audiences on a fictional journey inside the home of a beloved poet as her family wrestles with complex questions about personal privacy for public people when they discover a cache of profoundly personal, and compromising, poems and letters.

“The Mint’s production demonstrated unequivocally not only the theatrical viability, but also the humor and poignancy of Glaspell’s play,” observed Professor J. Ellen Gainor of Cornell, author of “Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture, and Politics, 1915-48”. Nytheatre.com echoed the praise calling the production “an excellent rendition of a play that has undeservedly been cast aside…a splendid work of theater, one that speaks resonantly to us today as we approach the dawning of a new millennium.”1

Susan Glaspell (Playwright) Ms.Glaspell is often called “the mother of American Drama” for her role in founding the Provincetown Players, together with her husband, George “Jig” Cook, and a handful of friends.  Ms. Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill were the leading playwrights for the Players.  Susan Glaspell is best known for her short play Trifles and her short story A Jury of Her Peers, both based on the murder trial of a farm woman who had hatcheted her husband in their bed.  Ms. Glaspell covered the trial as a journalist in Iowa.  Always a champion of free speech and other liberal causes, Glaspell campaigned in 1927 in support of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, while continuing to write novels, plays, stories, and a biography of Cook.   Her play A Comic Artist was produced in London and New York, and in 1930 she became the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in drama for her play Alison’s House.  In the thirties she gave up playwriting, although she headed the Midwest Play Bureau of the Federal Theatre Project for two years.  Her 1939 novel The Morning Is Near Us was the last of her works to receive wide acclaim. In all she produced fifty short stories, fourteen plays, and nine novels.

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CAST

  • Ann Leslie Sharron Bower
  • Jennie Ruth Kulerman
  • Richard Knowles David Fitzgerald
  • Ted Stanhope Matt Opatrny
  • Louise Sarah Brockus
  • The Father Lee Moore
  • Eben Gerard O’Brien
  • Elsa Karla Mason
  • Miss Agatha Ann Hillary

CREATIVES

  • Set Design K. Maynard
  • Lighting Design Mark T. Simpson
  • Costume Design Moe Schell
  • Assistant Director E. Downes Lewis
  • Stage Manager Mazerati A. Nieves