Eugene O'Neill Review Special Issue on "Acting O’Neill"

Reflecting on her 2001 West End portrayal of Mary Tyrone, Jessica Lange opens the “Foreword” to Long Day’s Journey into Night: Critical Edition by writing: “There are roles that arrive like gifts. Given and received […] Actors can fall in love with characters they play, obsess over them, cling to them . . . sometimes we’re haunted by them.”

Eugene O’Neill’s plays and characters have long been celebrated by actors, even when they pose unconventional challenges or demand extraordinary rigor.

Eugene O’Neill Review is soliciting peer-reviewed articles related to Eugene O’Neill and the practice (or art) of acting for inclusion in EOR 48.2. We invite scholars, performers, directors, and practitioners to reflect on the challenges, discoveries, and enduring appeal of acting O’Neill's work.

Potential contributions might include:

• An essay centered on detailing and historicizing those actors known and acclaimed for performing O’Neill plays (Charles Gilpin, Paul Robeson, Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst, Jessica Tandy, Jessica Lange, among others)
  
  • The ways actors reimagined the characters of O’Neill’s plays in the spirit of Katie N. Johnson’s Racing the Great White Way
  
  • The role of acting/actors for O’Neill’s plays/characters (traditional actors like James Tyrone or those forced to perform in everyday life like Anna Christie or Willie Oban)
  
  • Casting, especially non-traditional casting for O’Neill plays, as in Geraldine Fitzgerald’s or Robert O’Hara’s off-Broadway productions of Long Day’s Journey into Night.
  
  • New perspectives, reflections, or retrospectives on acting or directing an O’Neill script, whether at the professional level or in an educational setting. 
  
  • Or any other novel idea related to O’Neill and performance/acting.
  
  We invite submissions of 5,000-10,000-word articles, which can be submitted to the Editorial Management system for Penn State University Press: https://www.editorialmanager.com/eor/default.aspx.
  
  We also invite proposals for interviews and shorter pieces related to contemporary productions of O’Neill’s work to be featured in the Practitioners' Colloquia. 
  
  Information about the Eugene O’Neill Review can be found at https://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_EOR.html
  
  Deadline: January 1st, 2027.
  
  If you have any questions, email J. Chris Westgate at eugeneoneillrevieweditor@gmail.com