UK Playwright One of First Artists-in-Residence at Eugene O'Neill Home
LEXINGTON, Ky. (June 3, 2015) — A University of Kentucky professor has been selected as one of the first two Travis Bogard Artists-in-Residence, carrying on a project decades in the making while spending more than two weeks in the secluded home of its subject, Eugene O'Neill. Herman Daniel Farrell III, associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, will work in the home of Nobel Prize-winning playwright at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site in Danville, California, through June 20.
Farrell, who arrives at O'Neill's home today, is one of the first artists to be awarded this new fellowship through the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House. He will be working on a draft of a new "postmodern" play about O’Neill’s life and work, tentatively titled "Journey."
The fellowship program is to provide developing or established artists, scholars or critics of the performing arts the opportunity to work in the solitude and quiet which was for O’Neill the creative atmosphere in which he produced his masterpieces including "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day’s Journey Into Night."
Farrell’s work will revisit his first playwriting undertaking in 1983 after graduating Vassar College. That "epic" four-hour play examined the life and work of O’Neill. Farrell says that, after 30 years of studying and teaching O’Neill and continuing to develop his skills as an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, he is ready to take on the subject again. This time, though, he plans to approach O’Neill in a "more fragmentary and postmodern manner."
"As I have lived I have experienced the power and pervasiveness of memory that O'Neill examined in so many of his works," Farrell said. "My way into the work this time will more closely resemble the dance of memory that reconstructs a moment not via whole cloth remembering but through chasing after fleeting moments and dodging shadow-like images, including the capturing of stealthy ghosts who only appear when you look away, who make their presence known only on the periphery of your mind's eye."
Farrell looks forward to his time at Tao House, including access to the home’s library of manuscripts, letters, photographs and special collections.
"I have no doubt that walking those grounds and spending time in that storied home will provide me with boundless inspiration for this project, a project that I have been working on, here and there, in fits and starts, over the course of my entire career as a playwright," Farrell said.
The UK Department of Theatre and Dance at UK College of Fine Arts has played an active role in the performance scene in Central Kentucky for more than 100 years. Students in the program get hands-on training and one-on-one mentorship from the renowned professional theatre faculty. The liberal arts focus of their bachelor's degree program is coupled with ongoing career counseling to ensure a successful transition from campus to professional life.
MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu