Tao House. Eugene O'Neill
Tao House, on the crest of a hill outside Danville, now a part of the park system, was the last home of American's playwright, Eugene O'Neill. (1888-1953) Much influenced by Strindberg and also by Ibsen, he wrote his final and best plays including "The Iceman Cometh", "Long Day's journey into Night, and "A Moon for the Misbegotten". Awarded the Pulitzer prize four times, in 1936 he also won the Noble Prize for literature. It is then that he and his wife moved to California, in search of privacy. They fell in love with the East Bay hills, as have I.
With the Noble prize money, they were able to buy 150 acres of a former ranch and here they built Tao House, and furnished it with Chinese carpets. Tao House changed the feelings O'Neill expressed in "I will always be a stranger who never feels at home." They had a beloved dalmation, "Blemie". Tao House's ceilings are painted blue like the heavens and its doors CHinese red for good luck. O'Neill died of Parkinson's disease. His daughter Oona married Charlie Chaplin in spite of her father's objections.
I will go to Tao House near Danville, for a tour, on Sunday, September 28, and see a performance of "The Iceman Cometh". I will update this blog entry, at that time...(well it was never updated and this is 2020) so for now, I will just let this go.
I spent three years on the Board of Directors and was active at Tao House, probably visiting nearly once a month and saw all the plays produced there, and enjoyed my commitment to O'Neill in this period, as an American writer, who had lived and written most of his masterworks at this house in California, not so far from where I live.
Perhaps I will add more, but not today.
With the Noble prize money, they were able to buy 150 acres of a former ranch and here they built Tao House, and furnished it with Chinese carpets. Tao House changed the feelings O'Neill expressed in "I will always be a stranger who never feels at home." They had a beloved dalmation, "Blemie". Tao House's ceilings are painted blue like the heavens and its doors CHinese red for good luck. O'Neill died of Parkinson's disease. His daughter Oona married Charlie Chaplin in spite of her father's objections.
I will go to Tao House near Danville, for a tour, on Sunday, September 28, and see a performance of "The Iceman Cometh". I will update this blog entry, at that time...(well it was never updated and this is 2020) so for now, I will just let this go.
I spent three years on the Board of Directors and was active at Tao House, probably visiting nearly once a month and saw all the plays produced there, and enjoyed my commitment to O'Neill in this period, as an American writer, who had lived and written most of his masterworks at this house in California, not so far from where I live.
Perhaps I will add more, but not today.
Comments
Post a Comment