O'Neill's Grotesque Dancers

Abstract

AS A POET of the theatre, Eugene O'Neill recognized the value of stage movement. Like all playwrights, he knew that gesture and stage position reveal character; unlike most, he was also interested in broader movements of individuals and groups to reveal theme. Nietzsche's praise of the Dionysian dance in The Birth of Tragedy, Kenneth Macgowan's emphasis on movement and music for the Theatre of Tomorrow, Max Reinhardt's pageant plays, and Gordon Craig's desire to bring "Dancing, Pantomime, Marionettes, Masks; these things so vital to the ancients" back into modern theatre - all exerted their influence on the young American dramatist. O'Neill seemed especially intrigued with the thematic possibilities of movement during his expressionistic period, when several of his plays exhibited bizarre, distorted dances or motions in accordance with their grotesque themes. Grotesque variations on the graceful movements of dance in The Emperor Jones, The Great God Brown, and Desire Under the Elms, for instance, served to point up man's alienation and domination by irrational passions. Mechanical motions also intrigued the playwright, and appeared in group movements of Jones, The Hairy Ape and Lazarus Laughed in conjunction with the themes of alienation from one's self, from modern society, and from life itself. Finally, in Lazarus Laughed, O'Neill choreographed mass movement on a grand scale in an attempt to restore theatre to the religious position it held in ancient Greek society; but again, the motions assumed modern, grotesque forms to express the play's central theme of man's perversity. For O'Neill's thematic use of movement was basically modern, functioning in these experimental plays to emphasize his major themes of the irrational, alienation, and the tragicomic condition of mankind.