Autograph notebook, signed, belonging to Susan Glaspell. 1915.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Provincetown Players II

George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell

George “Jig” Cram Cook and his wife, Susan Glaspell, were two of the founding members of the Provincetown Players. Cook, impressed with having seen the Irish Players, wanted to form a similar theatre group to write, design, stage, and perform new plays by American playwrights. Cook and Glaspell, individually, wrote many other plays that the Players produced. Wishing to expand their audience, Cook led the way in moving the Provincetown Players to New York.

In 1922, having become disenchanted with the management of the Players and the group’s endorsement of more commercial theatre, Cook and Glaspell left for Greece. Following Cook’s death there in 1924, Glaspell returned to live in Provincetown, where she continued writing novels and plays.

Together, Cook and Glaspell penned one of the first pieces staged by the Players, entitled Suppressed Desires, which spoofed the new practice of psychoanalysis. 

Typed manuscript of Suppressed Desires by George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell. With autograph corrections. No date. From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Cook discusses the fate of the Provincetown Players.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Aria da Capo (A Play in One Act). [London]: Chapbook, 1920.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay joined the Provincetown Players after their arrival in New York. In 1917, early in her literary career, she moved to Greenwich Village and auditioned to become an actor in the company. Her involvement with the Players lasted until 1919, and she progressed from actor to director and playwright. The Provincetown Players produced her one-act verse play Aria da Capo in 1919.

Reed, Jack. Everymagazine: An Immorality Play. Music by Bill Daly. [New York]: n.p., [1913].

From the Marvin Tatum Collection of Contemporary Literature.

Jack Reed

John “Jack” Reed, noted journalist and revolutionary, was part of the creative group that summered in Provincetown. In 1916, Reed provided the Provincetown Players with two plays—Freedom and Eternal Triangle. Reed was married to journalist and writer Louise Bryant, who also contributed to the Players summer theatre bill. Both were political activists whose works reflected the socialist leanings of the bohemian group. Reed became best known for his Ten Days That Shook the World, a first-hand eyewitness account that chronicled the Russian Revolution. He died in Russia in 1920 and was buried under the wall of the Kremlin in Moscow’s Red Square.

The play was produced before the Dutch Treat Club at Delmonico’s, on February 19, 1913.