Nobel Prize Laureate Eugene O’Neill To Be Celebrated With Induction Into The American Poets Corner

    When:
    November 13, 2016 – November 14, 2016 all-day
    Click to view map
    Where:
    Cathedral Church of Saint John: The Great Divine in the City and Diocese of New York
    1047 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10025
    USA

    Nobel Prize Laureate Eugene O’neill To Be Celebrated

    With Induction Into The American Poets Corner

    Sunday, November 13 – 4:00 – 5:30 pm
    Monday, November 14 – 7:00 – 9:00 pm

    Induction ceremony and unveiling of stone to take place on Sunday, November 13

    Celebration of Eugene O’Neill to take place on Monday, November 14

    Eugene O’Neill commemorative stamp, issue date October 16, 1967

    eugene-oneillThe Cathedral of St. John the Divine
    1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street)
    Manhattan

    The Cathedral of St. John the Divine will celebrate the legacy of American playwright and Nobel laureate, Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) with his induction into its American Poets Corner onSunday, November 13, from 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, followed by a celebration on November 14 from 7:00 PM – 9:00PM, at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue (at 112th Street), Manhattan.

    O’Neill’s formal induction will take place during the traditional Evensong service sung by the Cathedral Choir and conducted by Director of Cathedral Music Kent Tritle, featuring the Mt. St. Alban Service composed by David Hogan and the traditional African American spiritual “My Lord, What a Morning,” arranged by Harry T. Burleigh. The Sunday Evensong will also include comments by Robert M. Dowling, editor of The Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill. Following the service, guests and congregants will process to the Poets Corner, to unveil a stone honoring O’Neill.

    The following night, Marilyn Nelson, the Cathedral’s Poet in Residence, will be joined by actors from the O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, CT, to perform excerpts from Fog, one of O’Neill’s earliest plays, and from Moon for the Misbegotten, one of his final plays. Joining the assembled actors, authors and critics for this celebration will be a number of the distinguished writers who make up the Cathedral’s Board of Electors to the Poets Corner, along with Robert A. Richter, author of Eugene O’Neill and Dat Ole Davil Sea.

    Born in New York in 1888, O’Neill spent most of his childhood in hotel rooms while his father, a successful touring actor, went from city to city to perform. O’Neill’s first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His most well-known plays include  Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and his only well-known comedy, Ah, Wilderness!.

    The American Poets Corner, created in 1984 to memorialize and celebrate American writers, is modeled after a similar alcove at Westminster Abbey in London. Previous inductees include Emily Dickinson, e e cummings, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, John Berryman, Flannery O’Connor and last year’s honoree Zora Neale Hurston.  The American Poets Corner and Cathedral poetry events have become an integral part of the literary landscape of New York.

    For more information please visit http://www.stjohndivine.org/programs/american-poets-corner.