Abstract
In 2009, Greg Allen, founder of the US experimental theatre company The Neo-Futurists, offered a distinctive take on Eugene O’Neill’s 1928 play Strange Interlude. The five-and-a-half-hour-long production was both rapturously and rancorously received, prompting standing ovations and walkouts in its short run. This was a twenty-first century, ironic presentation of Strange Interlude that exploited and revelled in the play’s strangeness by revealing it anew. The production offers insight not only into O’Neill’s play but also into his authorial presence in the text, the construction of his authority and canonicity, and the legacy of modernist experimentation. This chapter ponders the way in which modernist play-texts can be ‘re-made new’ for the stage, to adapt Ezra Pound’s famous dictum, using this inventive, irreverent production as a case study.
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Curtin, A. (2018). The Neo-Futurists(’) Take on Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude . In: Reilly, K. (eds) Contemporary Approaches to Adaptation in Theatre. Adaptation in Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59783-0_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59783-0_13
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