McCarter Resource Guide: A Moon for the Misbegotten
McCarter Theatre is pleased to present A Moon for the Misbegotten, the final play by one of America’s
most important playwrights. Eugene O’Neill was a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner and a winner of the
Nobel Prize. The son of a very popular and commercially successful 19th century actor, his writing
style bridged the 19th and 20th centuries, moving from melodrama to realism to expressionism and
back again. He is the rare writer whose late work is considered his strongest, and his depiction of the
Tyrone family—a portrait based on his own family—in Long Day’s Journey Into Night and A Moon For
the Misbegotten, is among the most painfully moving in literature.
O’Neill began work on Moon shortly after he finished Long Day’s Journey Into Night. The play
reintroduces the character of James Tyrone, the alcoholic failed actor (based on O’Neill’s own brother),
but also focuses on his tenant neighbors, the farmer Phil Hogan and his daughter Josie: a very
different, but equally damaged, family of Irish Americans. Tough, feminine and darkly funny, Josie
Hogan’s complicated relationships with the man she (might) love, and with her hard-working, harddrinking, suspicious and difficult father are the heart of Moon. It’s a funny and tragic portrait of
desperate people in difficult circumstances and of the ways we hurt those we love.
Phil Hogan and his daughter Josie work their Connecticut tenant farm in
September 1923. Hogan, an Irish immigrant and widower, has already
driven away his two eldest sons with his bull-like, domineering manner
S[haughnessy]. play idea, based
and aggressive behavior. Josie now assists Mike, as she has her other
on story told by E[dmund]. in
two brothers, in making his escape from his father and the farm. Of
1st Act of “L[ong]. D[ay’s]. J
Hogan’s children, Josie alone is devoted to him – only she understands
[ourney]. I[nto]. N[ight].” – except
him and can hold her own against him. For all his bluster, Hogan knows
here Jamie principal character &
story of play otherwise entirely
that it is his daughter’s strength and work ethic that have held them
imaginary, except J[amie].’s
together for so many years on the farm. Together, they are a powerful
revelation of self.
force and not above carrying out various scams and ruses as they scrape
together a living. While Hogan turns to the bottle to quell his insecurities,
— Work Diary entry for
Josie masks her own vulnerability by portraying a rough, raw persona to
October 28, 1941
the outside world. She is often crass and flippant regarding her own and
others’ perceptions of herself and her locally acclaimed “loose morals.” However, that attitude is merely
a façade, hiding deeply felt emotions and desires. Josie is secretly in love with their landlord, Jim
Tyrone.
O’Neill’s original idea for
A Moon for the Misbegotten:
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McCarter Resource Guide: A Moon for the Misbegotten
Tyrone, who took over as the Hogans’ landlord after his father’s death, is an alcoholic third-rate actor.
Though in love with Josie, he craves a return to New York and the lights of Broadway. Tyrone had, in
the past, promised to sell Hogan the land he lived on and worked at a reasonable price, once the rest
of Tyrone’s inheritance came through. However, after an evening of drinking with Jim and others at the
local inn, Hogan tells Josie that he thinks Jim will renege on his promise and instead sell out to their
rich, hostile neighbor, the pompous T. Stedman Harder. The Hogans decide to take advantage of Jim’s
alcoholism and his clear affection for Josie by setting a trap for him. Josie will get him drunk and
seduce him, and her father will bring witnesses to catch them “in the act” and force him to marry her.
Nothing goes as planned. Josie discovers that Tyrone had never planned to sell the land out from
under them. His only desire is to rest a while in Josie’s arms, and although he does love her, his own
self-loathing over his past indiscretions and his need to remove himself to the anonymity of the City
prevents him from committing to any relationship. When Hogan returns home early the next morning
without witnesses, Josie realizes that she has been duped by her father, who says that his intention
was actually to have Josie and Tyrone finally embrace the love they have for one another. When
Tyrone eventually wakes up, he is at first oblivious to the dark secrets he has shared with Josie under
the influence of alcohol and a lover’s moon. As he remembers the confessions he made during the
night, he is appalled, and although he declares his love for Josie, he leaves, both of them knowing he
will never return. The play closes with Josie and her father left alone on the farm.
Adapted from Long Wharf Theatre’s Study Guide.
Josie Hogan: Josie is a big-boned, sharp-tongued 28 year-old who pretends loose morals and
promiscuity but is secretly in love with Jim Tyrone. Of all the Hogan siblings, Josie is the only one tough
enough to handle their father.
“Och, Father, don’t play the jackass with me. You know, and I know, I’m an ugly overgrown lump of a
woman, and the men that want me are no better than stupid bulls.”
Phil Hogan: A hard-working, hard-drinking, forever scheming 50-something Irishman, Hogan lost his wife
in childbirth and has gradually lost all of his children as well, except Josie.
“I only raised my hand to her once…The next moment I was on the floor thinking a mule had kicked
me. Since you’ve grown up, I’ve had the same trouble. There’s no liberty in my own home.”
Mike Hogan: Mike is Phil Hogan’s youngest son. Immature, a little self-righteous and far too soft to hold
his own with his father, Mike runs away with the help of his sister, Josie.
“That’s right! Make fun of me again, because I want to be decent.”
James Tyrone: An alcoholic actor from New York, Jim is the landlord of the Hogans’ farm. He is haunted
by memories of his past and plagued by self-loathing.
“Thanks, Josie. I mean, for not believing I’m a rotten louse. Everyone else believes it – including myself
– for a damned good reason.”
T. Stedman Harder: Harder, the wealthy neighbor of the Hogans, owns a large estate and hopes to
expand his property by buying the farm on which the Hogans work.
“If you dare touch that fence again, I’ll put this matter in the hands of the police!”
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McCarter Resource Guide: A Moon for the Misbegotten
MISBEGOTTEN:
Having an improper basis or
origin, ill-conceived. Also, illegally
or abnormally obtained,
sometimes meaning illegitimate.
Belasco: David Belasco (1853-1931) was an American theatrical
manager, producer and occasional playwright best known for spectacular
stage settings and inventive lighting.
Blarney: Smooth, flattering talk (derived from Blarney Stone, located at
Blarney Castle in southern Ireland. Kissing the Blarney Stone is said to impart powers of eloquence
and persuasion.).
Blather: Chatter, nonsense.
Blotto: Slang: drunk.
Bonded Bourbon: Bourbon whiskey that has been aged and bottled according to the Bottled in Bond Act
of 1897. It is straight bourbon whiskey, made at one time and in one location, that has been aged in
government-supervised warehouses for at least four years and bottled at 100 proof.
Bootlegger: A person who engages in smuggling (illegal trade). Bootleggers are often associated with
the illegal trade of alcohol during Prohibition.
Brass: Showing blatant self-assurance or impudent boldness.
Brazen: Bold, forward.
Bunk: Slang: empty talk, nonsense.
Cholera: An acute, often fatal, infectious disease often contracted by drinking contaminated water.
Dago red: Derogatory slang term for the type of red wine made by Italian immigrants.
Dirge: A slow, mournful song or elegiac poem.
Divil a speck: Slang: “scarcely a speck.”
Drivel: Stupid or senseless talk.
D.T.s: Delirium Tremens. An acute, sometimes fatal episode of delirium that is usually caused by
withdrawal or abstinence from alcohol following habitual excessive drinking. It is characterized by
sweating, trembling, anxiety, confusion and hallucinations. It also may occur during an episode of
heavy alcohol consumption.
Duke of Donegal: County Donegal is located in northwest Ireland.
Eminent: Well-known, important.
Exalted: Dignified, glorious.
Flinders: Bits, fragments.
Gab: Chatter.
Gabriel’s horn: According to the Bible, the Archangel Gabriel will blow his horn to announce the arrival of
Judgment Day.
Graft: Unscrupulous use of one’s position to derive profit or advantages; extortion.
Guff: Small-talk.
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Heebie jeebies: A state of nervous excitement, brought on by fear, anticipation, drugs, etc.; delirium
tremens.
Hooch: Alcohol, particularly illicitly produced. The word originally referred to strong liquor made by the
Hoochino Indians of Alaska.
Infirm: Sick, unwell.
Insinuating: To insinuate means to imply, to suggest subtly or craftily.
Jack Dempsey: (1895-1983) World heavyweight boxing champion from 1919-1926, who had a pro
record of 64-6-9.
Jag: Spree, overindulgence.
Jebs: Slang for Jesuits. The Jesuit order, founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius Loyola, is renowned for its
strict, hierarchical, almost military discipline and its emphasis on an education based on the classics.
Swag: Swag is slang for stolen property or loot.
Limey: Slang (often derogatory): An Englishman (noun); English or British (adjective).
Macadam: A pavement of layers of compacted broken stone, now usually bound with tar or asphalt.
Messalina: (17-48 CE) Third wife of Roman emperor Claudius, portrayed in the works of Tacitus and
other historians as a ruthless nymphomaniac.
Minx: A promiscuous woman.
Miser: A greedy, stingy person.
Mug: A person’s face or the photograph of a face (as in the term “mug shot”).
Nix: To forbid, veto; also a slang exclamation meaning stop.
Paralytic: A person unable to move or act.
Pelt: To move quickly, in an energetic gait.
Pie-eyed: very drunk.
Pinched: Slang: arrested.
Pins: Slang: legs.
Pious: Religiously devout, virtuous, moral.
Praties: Irish slang for potatoes.
Probate: The process of legally establishing the validity of a will before a judicial authority.
Prohibition: A ban, ruling out; also refers to the period (1920-33) when the 18th Amendment and the
Prohibition Act prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States.
Punk: Of poor quality, worthless.
Puss: Face, mouth; derives from Irish Gaelic pus, mouth.
Ramses: (12th-11th centuries BCE) The last great Pharoah of Egypt, after whose death the nation fell
into decline
.
Rotgut: Slang: raw, inferior liquor.
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Rumpus: A disturbance, commotion.
Savage: Fierce, merciless.
Sen-Sen: A breath freshener developed shortly before the turn of the century by T.B. Dunn and Co.,
perfume dealers in Rochester, NY.
Shanty: A shack.
Skinflint: A miser.
Soused: Very drunk.
Speakeasy: A place for the illegal sale of alcoholic drinks, particularly during Prohibition.
Spindle-Shanked: Slang insult: having long, skinny legs.
Spry: Lively, active.
Standard Oil: John D. Rockefeller invested in a Cleveland oil refinery during the Civil War and in 1870
created Standard Oil, which refined about 95% of the United States’ oil in 1880. In 1911, Standard Oil
was declared an illegal monopoly and split into 34 companies, including Esso (renamed Exxon in
1972), Mobil, Chevron, Atlantic Richfield (later ARCO), and Amoco.
Stewed: Slang: drunk.
Stinko: Slang: drunk.
Stint: To restrict or limit; to be sparing.
Sundry: Various, several.
Swindle: To cheat, trick.
Tart: Slang: a loose woman, slut, prostitute.
Teetotaller: One who never drinks alcohol.
Temperance: Restraint, self-control; often in reference to alcohol.
Trollop: A dirty, untidy woman.
Virtuous: Honorable, honest, righteous; often used to mean chaste or pure, in reference to women.
Wake: A watch over the body of a deceased person before burial, sometimes accompanied by festivity.
Wallow: To revel in; to be plentifully supplied.
Wanton: Immoral or unchaste, lewd.
Yen: A strong desire or inclination; a longing or craving.
Adapted from Long Wharf Theatre’s Study Guide.
Eugene O’Neill was born in 1888 in a Broadway hotel. His father,
James O’Neill, was an actor who sacrificed artistic fulfillment for
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financial stability, performing for many years as the title role in a
traveling production of the popular melodrama The Count of Monte
Cristo. Before beginning school, O’Neill spent his first seven years
touring with his father’s theater company. In 1906 his formal
education ended, as he dropped out of Princeton University before
completing his first year.
In 1910 O’Neill married Kathleen Jenkins, but he soon left for sea
travel, and they divorced two years later. He contracted malaria and
later tuberculosis during his travels and went to a Connecticut
Eugene O’Neill sketching at New London,
sanitarium to recover. In 1913 he began to write plays, beginning with
ca. 1893. Courtesy of Princeton University
one-acts and melodramas. In 1920, his play Beyond the Horizon
Library.
attracted national attention and won O’Neill his first Pulitzer Prize. His
most productive period followed the success of Beyond the Horizon, though it also brought tragedies in
his personal life, including the end of his second marriage and the deaths of his father, mother and
brother.
O’Neill’s work was experimental and extremely
influential, and many of his plays were produced
by the Provincetown Players, a noncommercial
theater company that provided unknown writers an
opportunity to experiment, thus revolutionizing
American theater.
In his final years O’Neill was plagued by a
Parkinson’s-like illness, and after the completion of
A Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, he was no
longer able to work. He lived in almost complete
isolation with his third wife, Carlotta Monterey, in
their home near San Francisco until his death in
1953.
Eugene, Jamie, and James O’Neill. Courtesy of the Sheaffer-O’Neill
Collection, Connecticut College.
O’Neill’s career consists of three periods. His
early realist plays (e.g. Beyond the Horizon)
utilize his own experiences as a seaman. In
the 1920s he rejected realism in an effort to
capture on the stage the forces behind human
life. His expressionistic plays during this period
(e.g. The Hairy Ape) were influenced by the
ideas of philosopher Freidrich Nietzche,
psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung,
and Swedish playwright August Strindberg.
During his final period, O’Neill returned to
realism (e.g. A Moon for the Misbegotten).
These later works, which most critics consider
his best, depend on his life experiences for
their story lines and themes.
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Eugene O’Neill a week before his
marriage to Carlotta Monterey in
Paris, 1929. Courtesy of Princeton
University Library.
Courtesy of Trinity Repertory Company.
Introduction to Realism
Realism is the artistic attempt to recreate life as it is in the context of an artistic
medium. The artist’s function is to report and describe what he sees as accurately and
honestly as possible. Realism attempts to portray life objectively. Theatrical Realism is
considered acting or living truthfully and authentically in imaginary circumstances.
Artists who tried their hand at Realism wanted to portray the life and times that people
recognized and with whom audiences could identify.
Adapted from Long Wharf Theatre’s Study Guide.
1913
●
●
●
●
A Wife for Life
The Web
Thirst
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
1917
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
Ile
The Long Voyage
Home
The Moon of the
Caribbees
In the Zone 1918
The Rope
Beyond the
Horizon
The Dreamy Kid
Where the Cross
Is Made
The Fountain
1929
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1915
●
●
1919
●
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1922
●
1914
Recklessness
Warnings
Bread and Butter
Servitude
Fog
Bound East for
Cardiff
Abortion
The Movie Man
The Straw
Chris
Christophersen
Shell Shock
Exorcism
(unpublished)
●
Welded
All God’s Chillun
Got Wings
1931
●
●
1920
●
●
●
●
1923
●
The Sniper
The Personal
Equation
1916
Gold
Anna Christie
The Emperor
Jones
Diff’rent
1921
●
●
1925
●
●
Marco Millions
The Great God
Brown
1932
Before Breakfast
Now I Ask You
●
●
The First Man
The Hairy Ape
1927
Lazarus
Laughed
Strange
Interlude
1933
McCarter Resource Guide: A Moon for the Misbegotten
●
●
Dynamo
●
1939
●
Mourning
Becomes
Electra
●
1941
The Iceman
Cometh
●
Long Day’s
Journey Into Night
●
●
Ah,
Wilderness!
1942
A Touch of the
Poet
Hughie
●
Daya without
end
1943
●
●
A Moon for the
Misbegotten
Awards
●
Nobel Prize for Literature: 1936
Pulitzer Prize:
●
●
●
●
Beyond the Horizon
Anna Christie
Strange Interlude
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (posthumous)
“Much that an American playwright needs to know can be learned by
studying Eugene Gladstone O’Neill’s life and work. He read a lot. His
income went up and down and was never reliable. His reputation
went up and down and was also unreliable. He avoided the film
industry entirely. Productions of his work caused him to despair, but
he kept writing. He gave up heavy drinking early on and was mostly
abstemious, disciplined; he exercised. He wrote his plays in
longhand. He took his time. He followed the news; he was politically
brave. He wrote of the self and also of the world. He wrote for the
Eugene O' Neill, Carlotta, and Puss at Tao
stage and also for publication. He was theatrical; he was dialectical.
House, 1939.
Courtesy Of Princeton University
He cultivated a public image; a small crowd of remarkable people
intersected with the largely antisocial playwright: Emma Goldman, John Reed, Robert Edmond Jones,
Paul Robeson, George Jean Nathan, Sean O’Casey, Hart Crane and, unhappily for O’Neill, Charlie
Chaplin, who married his daughter. He made friends with a few important critics. He married someone
who believed in his work. Winning big prizes did not protect him from savage assault. He argued with
God. He hid from the world. He exhorted himself to write better, dig deeper, and he did.”
- Tony Kushner, from “O’Neill”
“Truth, in the theatre as in life, is eternally difficult, just as the easy is the everlasting lie.”
— Eugene O’Neill, 1924
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McCarter Resource Guide: A Moon for the Misbegotten
Struggling to complete A Moon for the Misbegotten before illness permanently silenced his writing in
1943, Eugene O’Neill fancifully described the character based on his older brother, James O’Neill, Jr.,
as an “alien.” When Jim was born, wrote O’Neill in an early attempt to bring the character into focus,
the first thing he did was “look around at the earth and realize” he had been “sent to the wrong planet.”
“God had double-crossed him,” O’Neill elaborated in his scenario for the play, “and so he began to
curse… and he reached for a bottle of whiskey and said to himself, By God, I’ll show you! Try and catch
me now. And so he lived on cursing & drinking, being slapped on the back and no one ever caught
him…”
The idea for A Moon for the Misbegotten struck O’Neill almost immediately after he completed Long
Day’s Journey Into Night, his autobiographical masterpiece, which takes place in New London in 1912.
On Oct. 29, 1941, he noted in his work diary: “This can be strange combination comic-tragic –am
enthused about it.” The play afforded O’Neill a second look at his brother, depicted in Long Day’s
Journey Into Night as a 33-year-old, cynical, second-rate actor, alcoholic but still functional. Set 11
years later, A Moon for the Misbegotten portrays the brother (called James Tyrone, Jr., in both plays)
as a considerably more depressed, guilt-ridden and alcohol-sodden failure. He is now in his early 40s
and on the brink of death. At the time and place we meet this older Jim – “early September, 1923,” on a
farm in Connecticut – the real Jim was in a New Jersey sanitarium, nearly blind and in the terminal
stage of alcoholism.
A Moon for the Misbegotten was, it seems, a wish fulfillment on O’Neill’s part. He had been unable to
forgive his brother’s outrageous behavior during the months before his death and would not visit him at
the sanitarium. The play in one sense was a belated offering, two decades later, of redemption for his
brother and expiation for O’Neill’s own guilty lack of compassion at the time. The “Moon” O’Neill
conjured was a Mass for the long-dead brother he had once dearly loved but had come to resent.
The true story that drives the play is that of the final illness, in 1922, of Jim’s (and Eugene’s) mother,
Ella. After their father’s death in 1920, Jim had at last given up drinking for his mother’s sake. Sober for
a year and a half, he accompanied her to California to look into one of his father’s real estate
investments, and there she fell ill with an incurable brain tumor. Awaiting her death in terror, Jim began
drinking again as she lay in a coma. He became convinced that she awakened long enough to be
aware of his condition and to die in silent despair. Even worse, on the train bearing his mother’s coffin
home he picked up a prostitute and locked himself with her into his compartment, arriving in New York
too drunk and debauched to attend to the disposition of his mother’s body. All this soon became known
to his appalled brother.
The tragedy began in the winter of 1885, when Jim, known in the family bosom as Jamie, was 7. His
mother left him and his brother, Edmund, not quite 2, in their grandmother’s care in New York while she
went off to join her husband, the matinee idol James O’Neill, on his western theatrical tour. Up to then,
Jamie had often traveled with his parents, living in the closest intimacy with them in hotel rooms across
the country. Deprived of companions his own age, he was preternaturally attached to and dependent
on his mother and was acutely jealous and resentful of his baby brother’s intrusion into their lives.
During his mother’s absence, Jamie contracted measles and, despite warnings to stay away from the
baby, went into Edmund’s room and infected him. Before his mother could return, Edmund died. This
became the defining event of the O’Neill family tragedy, brooded upon and ever present to all the
O’Neills, even to Eugene, who was not born until three years later. The circumstance of the baby’s
death was of particularly excruciating pain to Jamie because his beloved mother, in her grief and
shock, accused him of having deliberately transmitted the illness to the baby. Jamie, though he
repressed his misery for a time, was ultimately destroyed by the guilty conviction that the mother he
worshiped believed he had killed his baby brother and could not forgive him.
Jamie’s misery was compounded when, shortly after his brother’s death, he was banished to a Roman
Catholic boarding school in Indiana, where he was to spend the next nine years. Jamie at first strove to
be an exemplary student, earning high grades and winning one award after another in such subjects as
rhetoric, elocution, oratory and Christian doctrine. At 10, he appeared to accept with good grace the
arrival of another brother, Eugene. In this instance it was easier to suppress his jealousy, for he now
had a life and friends apart from his parents and no longer felt compelled to vie for his mother’s daily
attention, although he did yearn for her visits at school. If O’Neill’s early scenario for A Moon for the
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Misbegotten may be taken literally, Jamie drew profound solace from the religious belief in which he
had been brought up. “There was once a boy who loved… purity and God with a great quiet passion
inside him,” reads a line in the scenario describing Jim Tyrone. Popular with his fellow students, as well
as something of a teacher’s pet, Jamie appeared in dramatic productions and played shortstop on the
baseball team. No one who knew this bright, ingratiating, high-achieving boy would have predicted
anything but the rosiest of futures for him.
His behavior turned erratic in his early teens when, during a school vacation, he stumbled on his
mother giving herself a morphine injection. “Christ, I’d never dreamed before that any women but
whores took dope!” Jim tells his younger brother in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Beginning with his
return to school in 1892, he began his spiral downward. Although still capable of bursts of exemplary
scholarship and literary achievement, he appears from that point on to have lost heart. He began to
blame his father for his mother’s condition and, for the first time, displayed an open disrespect that was
to ripen into ever-increasing nastiness.
Less than two months into his senior year at St. John’s College, Jamie was already in the decline from
which he never sprang back. On a bet, six months before graduation, Jamie brought a prostitute to the
campus and tried to pass her off to the Jesuit faculty as his sister. He was promptly expelled.
He halfheartedly tried various occupations and at last, grudgingly, allowed his father to start him on an
acting career. And since he was good-looking, with his father’s voice and his Irish wit and charm, the
stage did, at first, seem to suit him. But Jamie made little effort to grow as an actor. He was often drunk
on stage, justifying his behavior by insisting that his father had “forced” him into the theater. On tour,
Jamie would invite the town prostitutes to sit in the boxes and cheer him on. Dressed in buckskin tights,
he struck lascivious poses at the stage apron, flagrant enough to elicit the critics’ ridicule. Jamie’s
drinking finally put an end to his career at 38.
With no occupation, he devoted himself to his mother. “Jim hasn’t had a drink in almost a year and a
half now!” O’Neill wrote to a friend in January 1923. “Fact, I swear to you! My mother got him to go off
the wagon and stick – and he has stuck.”
O’Neill was in the midst of rehearsals for The Hairy Ape later that year when Jamie wired from
California that their mother was dying. Drinking without stop after her death on February 28, Jamie was
forcibly removed to the New Jersey sanitarium in May. On July 18 a friend of Jamie’s who visited him
regularly wrote to Eugene: “He is very thin, pale, trembles a great deal and of course very weak. He
cannot read or write so he asked me to write for him… He expressed a great desire to see you.” By the
end of October 1923 (a month after the time of the play’s action) a cousin of the O’Neills who had kept
in touch with the sanitarium reported to his wife, “Jim was out of his mind and getting weaker every
day.” He died on November 8, his life without doubt the most cruelly blighted of the four tragic O’Neills.
— Excerpted from the article that appeared in The New York Times
Between the early 1800s and the Depression years, Irish immigration to the U.S. continued unabated.
By 1920, almost 4.5 million Irish made their home in America. Irish immigrants frequently took up
either farming or the skilled trades they had previously practiced. Tenant farming (the agricultural
system in which landowners contribute their land and a measure of operating capital and management,
while tenants contribute their labor with various amounts of capital and management), a hold-over from
the “auld country” (old country), emerged as a common organization of agricultural production in New
England and elsewhere following the post-Civil War reconstruction period.
For northern landowners and tenant farmers alike, the first two decades of the 20th Century proved
auspicious, as gross farm income more than doubled and the value of the land itself more than tripled.
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This period of time has been referred to as “the golden age of agriculture.” Even though some profits
went into improving their farming operations, much of the farmer and landowner’s newly acquired
wealth went into products that made their lives more comfortable, such as plumbing and electricity.
Yet, despite this seeming improvement in the New England farming sector, a number of factors led to
the ultimate overshadowing of agriculture’s importance. Many farmers had grown so dependent on
new-found material goods and services that when economic downturns finally started to encroach upon
them, the lure of better jobs in urban centers quickly pulled them away from their country homes and
into the cities. Tenant farmers also suffered as the farmers’ children chose to leave the land their
parents had tilled in order to find their fortunes beyond the four walls of their family homes.
Adapted from Long Wharf Theatre’s Study Guide.
In the 19th century, refrigeration became a common
method of food preservation. Each winter,
communities harvested the ice that formed in their
lakes and rivers, storing it in large ice houses
insulated with hay and sawdust. This ice would be
used primarily to store meat and dairy products
during warm weather. Natural ice was also harvested
and sold commercially, with the industry reaching its
peak with 25 million tons harvested in 1886. Electric
refrigerators and manufactured ice were available in
the early 20th century, and the commercial trade of
Ice Harvesting, Conneaut Lake, PA, c. 1907. Courtesy of Library of
natural ice soon declined, with a brief revival during
Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-71467.
World War I. Many individual families and
communities, however, continued to harvest ice from their own lakes and ponds through the 1920s.
According to the NJ Department of Education, “experience with and knowledge of the arts is a vital part
of a complete education.” Our production of A Moon for the Misbegotten and the activities outlined in
this guide are designed to enrich your students’ education by addressing the following specific Core
Curriculum Standards for Visual and Performing Arts:
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1.1
All students will acquire knowledge and skills that increase aesthetic awareness in
dance, music, theater and visual arts.
1.2
All students will refine perceptual, intellectual, physical and technical skills through
creating dance, music, theater and/or visual arts.
1.4 All students will demonstrate knowledge of the process of critique.
All students will identify the various historical, social and cultural influences and
1.5 traditions which have generated artistic accomplishments throughout the ages and
which continue to shape contemporary arts.
1.6
All students will develop design skills for planning the form and function of space,
structures, objects, sounds and events.
Viewing A Moon for the Misbegotten and then participating in the pre and post-show discussions
suggested in this resource guide will also address the following Core Curriculum Standards in
Language Arts Literacy:
3.3
All students will speak in clear, concise, organized language that varies in
content and form for different audiences and purposes..
3.4
All students will listen actively to information from a variety of sources in a
variety of situations.
3.5
All students will access, view, evaluate and respond to print, non-print, and
electronic texts and resources.
The following sections of this resource guide enable leaders, teachers and
students to explore drama as a mode of learning. Adding drama to the classroom
is a creative, active and process-oriented approach to education, in which the
teacher and the students interact together. Teachers should participate in these
exercises with the students to create a safe environment for role-playing and
character exploration.
Drama-in-Education seeks to synthesize the activities of creative drama, artsbased curricula and theater conventions into experiences aimed at developing
imagination, awareness of self and others, aesthetic taste and life skills. Often these goals are
achieved through the examination of a particular theme or topic, which contributes to critical thinking
about the world in which we live. By providing structures and contexts, which both excite the interest of
participants and call for creative problem-solving, Drama-in-Education promotes deeper thinking about
a wide variety of issues.
This guide has been designed for teachers to utilize drama methods in an exploration of the themes
and situations presented in the play. We encourage you to adapt these lessons and activities to your
individual teaching situations, and thereby to discover the importance and power of drama in the
classroom.
The following questions and activities are designed to help students anticipate the performance and
then to build on their impressions and interpretations after attending the theater. While most of the
exercises provide specific instructions, please feel free to adapt these activities to accommodate your
own teaching strategies and curricular needs.
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Drama praxis refers to the manipulation of theater form by educational leaders to help participants act,
reflect and transform. At the core of drama praxis is the artful interplay between people, passion and
space as leaders and participants strive towards aesthetic understanding.
Drama-in-Education is a mode of learning. This form can be utilized across the curriculum and provides
useful tools to teach all lessons with a dramatic skew. Through the pupils’ active identification with
imagined roles and situations in drama, they can learn to explore issues, events and relationships. In
drama, participants can delve into circumstances as characters other than themselves. This distance
allows the participant to experience metaxis: the ability to explore a situation through a character’s eyes
while also seeing its relevance in the participant’s everyday life.
1. Discuss with your class the definition of the word ‘misbegotten.’
Brainstorm a list of ideas or themes that may become prevalent in a
play titled A Moon for the Misbegotten. What mood does the title set?
2. Look over the “Character Profiles” in this guide. Choose one
character and write a monologue from his or her point of view
explaining feelings and thoughts about his or her family, relationships
and past. Examine the character profiles and ask your students how
they imagine each character will look, act and speak. Have a
discussion with your students and determine which celebrities you would cast, if you could produce
your dream version of A Moon for the Misbegotten.
3. Eugene O’Neill took memories of his brother and put them down on paper. O’Neill’s work in A Moon
for the Misbegotten allows the audience to connect to situations that were true for him. Imagine that
you are a playwright. What compelling characters or situations in your life would you include in a play?
Write a scene involving characters or situations from your life that can be developed into a play that
would ring true to audiences of your peers.
4. Eugene O’Neill offers a very detailed description of the setting for A Moon for the Misbegotten. He
describes a house that imposes itself upon the Connecticut landscape. It is run down and unkempt.
How can its poverty be made clear in a theatrical setting? Imagine that you are designing the set for
this play. Design your own interpretation of A Moon for the Misbegotten, adapting some of your own
ideas that will offer a setting that captures the spirit, if not the detail of O’Neill’s suggestions. How do
you create the ugliness and the shabbiness of the house and its environment? What textures, colors,
materials help you to achieve this dilapidation? How do you accommodate the exterior and interior
scenes? Be prepared to field your classmates’ questions about your design choices.
“What I am after is to get an audience to leave the theater with an
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exultant feeling from seeing somebody on the stage facing life, fighting
against the eternal odds, not conquering, but perhaps inevitably being
conquered. The individual life is made significant just by the struggle.”
– Eugene O’Neill
1. What surprised you the most in your viewing of A Moon for the
Misbegotten? How did this production compare to your expectations?
What questions would you ask to the actors or director of this
production?
2. James Tyrone, Phil Hogan and Josie Hogan come from very
different classes and cultures. How are they insiders and how are they outsiders? Who holds the
power in their relationships? On what occasions have you found yourself in a place or situation that
makes you the outsider? Do you think that being an outsider makes you more aware of your cultural
and/or social identity?
3. Having seen the play, create your own character descriptions for the three principal characters of
Josie, Hogan and Tyrone. Start with a physical description, but also try to encapsulate something of
their personalities. Imagine that this piece of writing has to be included in a future edition of the script
for A Moon for the Misbegotten. Be as descriptive as possible, and try to capture these people’s
characteristics and mannerisms.
4. Eugene O’Neill often uses a poetic voice in his writing. His dialogue frequently moves beyond being
simply conversational. The same is true of his character descriptions in the script. Consider Eugene
O’Neill’s the following description of Josie:
She is so oversize for a woman that she is almost a freak…her sloping shoulders are broad…she has
long arms, immensely strong…the map of Ireland is stamped on her face…black hair as coarse as
horse’s mane…it is not a pretty face, but her large dark-blue eyes give it a note of beauty.
Revisit the character descriptions that you wrote and see if you can re-write them using a poetic voice.
5. One theme that comes up again and again in this play is that of lying and deception. Hogan lies to
his daughter for what he thinks is her own good. Do you think that Josie would have been better off
without Hogan’s lie? How would the story have changed? Do you think the parting of Josie and Jim
was inevitable with or without Hogan’s interference? How would the story be different if Hogan were
honest with Josie from the beginning?
1. To Tell the Truth. Divide the class into partners. Each pairing of students
should interview their respective partners about their lives. They should ask two
key questions: What was the funniest thing that ever happened to you? When
have you ever been scared for your life? After the stories have been told, the
interviewer should ask their partner how much of their story was embellished or
made up. Discuss with the class whether or not they feel that there are times
when it is acceptable to lie. When? Why? Is there ever a time when lying would
benefit a friend or family member? How have the characters justified their lies?
Do you agree with their choices? What would you do in their situations?
2. To Show the Truth. Using one of the subjects from the interview above, have
each pair choose one story from the pair interviews. Using only their bodies, movement and very basic
props, the students must convey the entire monologue without speaking. How important is visual
storytelling in live performance?
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3. Select a scene from A Moon for the Misbegotten to read in class with different students playing
different characters. As a class decide on the theme of this scene. (Forgiveness, Trust, Family, etc.)
Brainstorm other plays that involve this theme. Is this theme seen in your own lives? Your own
society? The world? Divide the class into three groups. Each group will present this theme in a
different style.
The Pastiche Method: This group will reenact the original scene that this discussion is based
on. They should perform the scene to the best of their ability, using whatever means possible to make
the scene as realistic as it can be. If there are more students than there are characters, you may have
a student become the director, the stage manager, etc.
The Tableau Method: This group will convey the theme assigned in a barrage of different
tableaux. A tableau is a frozen picture that tells a story or conveys an idea. Allow the students to
devise six or seven frozen pictures that focus on this theme. They can become characters in A Moon
for the Misbegotten, characters in other plays, scenes from movies, people in the world. The more
creative the better.
The Concept Method: This group must use an abstract method to describe their theme
accurately. They can employ dance, art, pantomime, TV clips, etc. to convey their message. They
cannot, however, use scenes or dialogue in their presentation.
4. The Talk Show. Have a brief discussion about the characters in A Moon for the Misbegotten.
Select students to portray each of the characters. To get the students into the necessary frame of
mind, have them perform the following monologues to the class. Remind them that each character
should have a clear and distinct character voice.
HOGAN: To hell with my breakfast! I’m not a pig that has no other thought but eating! Listen darlin’. All
you said about my lying and scheming, and what I hoped would happen is true. But it wasn’t his money,
Josie. I did see it was the last chance—the only one left to bring the two of you to stop your damned
pretending, and face the truth that you loved each other. I wanted you to find happiness, by hook or by
crook, one way or another, what did I care how? I wanted to save him, and I hoped he’d see that only
your love could— it was his talk of the beauty he saw in you that made me hope.
JIM: We went out to the Coast to see about selling a piece of property the Old Man had bought three
years ago. And one day she suddenly became ill. Got rapidly worse. Went into a coma. Brain tumor.
The docs said, no hope. Might never come out of coma. I went crazy. Couldn’t face losing her. The old
booze yen got me. I got drunk and stayed drunk. And I began hoping she’d never come out of the
coma, and see I was drinking again.
JOSIE: To hell with your honorable scruples! I know you want me! I couldn’t believe that until tonight—
but now I know. It’s in your kisses! Oh, you great fool! As if I gave a damn what happened after! I’ll
have had tonight and your love to remember for the rest of my days! Oh, Jim darling, haven’t you said
yourself there’s only tonight?
MIKE: Wait till I finish and you won’t be mad at me. I was going to say I wish you luck with your
scheming, for once. I hate Jim Tyrone’s guts, with his quotin’ Latin and his high-toned Jesuit College
education, putting on airs as if he was too good to wipe his shoes on me, when he’s nothing but a
drunken bum who never done a tap of work in his life, except acting on the stage while his father was
alive to get him the jobs. I’ll pray you find a way to nab him, Josie, and skin him out of his last nickel!
After they have performed their monologues, have a different student moderate a talk-show style
discussion where class members can ask the characters questions. Students playing roles should be
prepared to answer these questions and justify their actions.
5. Alternative Endings. In the latter half of the play we begin to uncover the pain and anguish in
Jim’s life as we learn more about the history of his drinking and his mother’s death.We also learn that
Josie is not who she pretends to be and that Hogan masks his motives and his love. These three
characters appear to have difficulty in revealing truths about themselves.
As a group, discuss the underlying motives for each of the characters. What is it that they hide from the
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people around them, or even from themselves? Why is this mask necessary? Is alcohol always the
issue or is it sometimes a mask in itself? Why is it that Jim and Josie cannot resolve the past to be
together at the end?
Have students improvise scenes using these three characters and the truth. What will happen if these
characters begin to reveal their secrets to one another? After the improvisations have the students rewrite a final scene that ends with Jim and Josie together. Will they be happy?
ACTING COMPANY
(in order of appearance)
Kathleen McNenny
Josie Hogan
Peter
Scanavino
Jack Willis
Phil Hogan
Mike Hogan
Andrew McCarthy
Jeremiah Wiggins
James Tyrone, Jr.
T. Stedman Harder
ARTISTIC STAFF
Gary Griffin
Eugene Lee
Jess Goldstein
Jane Cox
André Pluess
Ben Sussman
Stephen Gabis
J. Steven White
Douglas Langworthy
Laura Stancyzk, CSA
Cheryl Mintz
Kasey Ostopchuck
Director
Set Design
Costume Design
Lighting Design
Sound Design
Sound Design
Dialect Coach
Fight Director
Production Dramaturg
Casting Director
Production Stage
Manager
Assistant Stage
Manager
Gary Griffin (Director) returns to the McCarter having previously
directed My Fair Lady here in 2004. He recently directed the Broadway
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production of The Color Purple after having staged its world premiere
at the Alliance Theatre. Gary has directed The Apple Tree, A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn, Pardon My English, and The New Moon for City
Center Encores. He made his New York debut with Beautiful Thing at
the Cherry Lane Theatre. Gary is Associate Artistic Director of Chicago
Shakespeare Theatre where he has directed A Little Night Music,
Sunday in the Park with George, and Pacific Overtures, which was
remounted at London’s Donmar Warehouse and received the Olivier
award for Outstanding Musical Production. In Chicago Gary has
directed Gross Indecency, Hay Fever, and The Real Thing (Court
Theatre), Loot (Writer’s Theatre), The Homecoming (Famous Door
Theatre), and the U.S. premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Saturday Night (Pegasus Players
Theatre). He has received eight Joseph Jefferson awards for direction and has twice been
named a Chicagoan of the Year in the Arts by the Chicago Tribune.
Focus on the Father Director Gary Griffin casts a fresh look at
A Moon for the Misbegotten
At a recent brown bag lunch in the McCarter’s Berlind rehearsal room,
director Gary Griffin engaged the staff in a lively question and answer
session about his upcoming production of Moon for the Misbegotten.
Could you share some of your central thoughts about the play?
I’ve been haunted by this piece since I was in college. What has
interested me as I’ve gotten older is that it’s famous for this big
romantic third act between Josie and Tyrone. And yet the more I read
it, I was fascinated by the fact that when you look at the play in old
fashioned terms of analysis, it’s really about the father and daughter,
with Tyrone as the fulcrum. I think it’s interesting that when we cast the
play, we found the father (Hogan) first, and then the Josie and then the Tyrone. We
wanted to find a very unique and specific kind of father-daughter relationship that is more
like a marriage. It’s a very specific parent-child relationship, that anyone who has taken
care of their parent as an adult will understand—a relationship that changes to where you
have a kind of equality.
I also have found great humor in the play. In fact, I would love for this to be the funniest
production of Moon for the Misbegotten that people have ever seen. I think O’Neill
believes in the survival power of humor and of play. I’ve also found out how much O’Neill
loved vaudeville. The exchanges, particularly the Josie/Hogan scenes, are thrilling in that
wonderful performing improv that they live in.
Can you talk a little bit about the design that you came to?
My decision to source the play in the Josie/Hogan relationship meant that the house had
to be a character. That’s where I began my discussions with set designer Eugene Lee. I
wanted the opportunity to be able to play around that space, so that the second act, which
normally takes place on the porch, will take place inside the dining room area. Our set is
really the whole house.
What do you think Josie wants to accomplish through the course of this night?
I think she’s been given a challenge by her brother Mike. I think that’s why that first scene
is so important. She’s losing her mask, and I think she recognizes that there’s this one
opportunity. I think she’s ready to take a real risk with her heart. For me it’s about whether
or not she’ll leave. This is why I don’t think the play is romantic. As much as she cares for
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him, she’s not stupid. If you get her to the core, she knows exactly what’s up with Tyrone.
She’d like it to be different—we all want it to be different—but she knows. I think she hears
what Mike says to her, and she doesn’t want to be what he says she is. She doesn’t like
that definition of herself. And I think she tries to redefine herself over the course of the
evening.
Where are we left at the end of the play with this focus on Josie and her father? Is there room in
this play for hope?
It’s very complicated kind of hope if there is hope. I think it’s very sober. There’s a sobriety
to the fourth act. There’s a clarity that happens to all three of them, but I think it’s up to you
to see if you can handle the weight of that sobriety and find hope in that. But I don’t think
we’re going to try to say that everything’s OK, because the truths of the play are hard to
take. I think O’Neill believed that a lot of people are not able to handle the pain and terror
of living.
What would you like people to take away from this production?
This play has so often been strongly associated with the actors in the leading roles. There
was the Colleen Dewhurst/Jason Robards version, the Cherry Jones version. I hope that
people will think of this as the O’Neill version.
People who are not in the theater arts, may not understand the role of a lighting designer. Can you
briefly describe your craft?
A lighting designer’s job is as part of a design team that creates the visual picture on
stage, and can’t really be separated from the work of the other designers in its purely
visual sense. In an ideal world the overall visual design would feel as if it came from the
same person, the lighting would live in the same world as the scenery and the clothes,
emotionally and tonally. Unlike a set designer, a lighting designer is also responsible for
the rhythms of the transition (with the cast and the composers) and often the punctuation
and moving spatial dynamics of a piece of theater—the actors live in the world of the
design on stage and the lighting designer must work with the rhythms of the actors to
create the breath of the transitions between scenes—not so obvious in an O’Neill play, but
more so in other kinds of theater. Since lighting operates on subconscious levels as well
as on the purely visual, a designer must also help to create the right emotional mood for
the piece to live in. Lighting is also rather like the work of a cinematographer on a movie
sometimes, in that we create the focus of the visual picture and help decide where the
audience will be looking at any given moment.
Above all, when working on text based theater such as this, the lighting designer must
understand the text as a rhythmic and emotional world and be able to help translate this
onto the stage.
Practically speaking, a lighting designer will spend a week or two in the studio drafting and
designing alone, based on conversations with the director and other designers, and
rehearsals with the cast, as well as conversations with the technical staff of the
theater, and hopefully, a deep reading of the play. Then we arrive at a theater and focus
the lights where we want them to point with the help of a crew of several electricians (with
color and patterns and shutters to keep unwanted light away from places that it shouldn’t
be!). Then we start the technical rehearsal process, which is usually 3-6 long days with
everyone, where we light the play, stage it on the set and work our way into the costumes
and make-up and so on. After these “tech” rehearsal days, we often start previews where
we work in the afternoons on everything, including the lighting, and then perform the piece
at night. The lighting designer takes notes during the preview and then continues work on
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it in rehearsal the next day. So what you see on a first preview may be very different from
what you see by opening night.
How did you and Eugene Lee [MFTM Set Designer] work together to create a cohesive picture,
both emotionally and aesthetically?
Eugene and I operate basically in visual and emotional media and not in words. Eugene is
a brilliant visual artist who provided me with beautiful dynamic drawings and a wonderful
set model to work from that felt like it lived and breathed. Very few words were shared,
but this is not unusual between designers. Eugene had some ideas about the kind of
lighting units we might use to light the set (specifically large high wattage flood type
units) which told me a lot about how he imagined it lit—but I do believe that as a rule the
lighting is inherent in the set design if you just look at it long enough in the right frame of
mind.
It is often the case that words are misleading between designers and between designers
and directors unless everyone is very technically accomplished in each other’s fields. To
this end I would prefer to spend a few days in a room with a set model (which I did in this
case) than talking to someone, unless the transitions are very complicated or the set
moves and changes a lot.
The set for Moon is very sculptural—although it basically depicts a house, it is the skeleton
of a house, and it is set against a burlap sky. Inherent in the composition of the set are
possible angles of light which would create shadows of particular kinds, or reveal the
house as more or less threatening or mysterious. The rela tionship of the house to the
burlap “sky” behind is also malleable with light—the set could appear very stark against
the background, or it could blend into it depending on the lighting; the burlap could appear
very close or very distant. As a lighting designer, I try to see in the set what possibilities
there are for different relationships between the elements of the set under different angles
and colors of lighting and I try to provide them for the technical rehearsal process. It isn’t
until we all sit in a room together with actors on the stage and actually look at lights on a
set that we can really have a conversation about what we need to look at in any particular
scene.
This play has a lot of reference to the passage of time; the characters spend a great deal of time
outside waiting for the morning to come, and then it finally does. How will you show this?
Gary talked a lot about not wanting the play to ever appear romantic, or sentimental. The
play is tonally very stark and harsh in many ways, so it is very important that night time
not feel romantic. It is always tricky to do extended night time scenes onstage that feel
emotionally real. To my mind, the feeling of night is more about what you can’t see than
what you can see - the quality of a night is more about where the darkness is and how
threatening or not the shadows are than about the color. So, hopefully night will feel very
“real” in this production - a little unknown and mysterious and threatening rather than
beautiful and romantic.
What is interesting about the move to dawn in this play is that it is really about revelation,
the growing revelation of who these people really are and what their future is likely to be
and the end of any fantasies that they might have had about each other. Dawn will lean
more in this production to a revealing, harsh dawn than towards a beautiful romantic dawn
- we have talked about the coldness of the reality that they are left with as the sun comes
back up.
The tone of O’Neill’s plays is often described as “dark,” an interesting word for someone whose
role deals entirely with lighting. How does this kind of tonal reference tie into the literal conceit of
your design?
We plan to light the first act of the play warmly, open and bright, not very suggestive or
moody. Gary has talked about hoping that the audience will be carried along with the
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humor and wit of the first act and not pick up too soon on the harsh turn the play takes as
it continues. To this end, we will probably see the set in its most open, least shadowy and
yet softest look at the top of the play. As night falls the world is darker on stage and there
is the possibility in the darkness of night for fantasies to come true, reality to shift, and
people appear differently to each other. Night time may shift and change a little as
the characters experience the night together. But really the night time here is a set-up for
the dawn that follows, where everyone is seen in the clear harsh light of day—the
“darkest” scene emotionally is probably the last act but it will be the brightest lighting of the
play, I imagine.
I don’t think the play is ever literally dark in a purely visual way, though—of course it is a
play that relies entirely on delivery of a complex text and a lot of emotional subtext, so it is
always important to see the actors clearly. I also think, though, that we don’t want to be
dark, because in many ways the play is about fantasies destroyed and about the stark
realities for these people, not so much about fear or depression in a muted or visually dark
way. Darkness in tone here refers to the emotional landscape of these characters, which
may best be seen in a really harsh light.
Cargill, Oscar, et al., ed. O’Neill and His Plays. New York: New York UP, 1961.
Gelb, Arthur and Barbara. O’Neill. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960.
Gelb, Arthur and Barbara. O’Neill: Life with Monte Cristo. New York: Applause, 2000.
Jones, Joseph C., Jr. America’s Icemen: An Illustrative History of the United States
Natural Ice
Industry 1665-1925. Humble, TX: Jobeco Books, 1984.
The Official Website of the Eugene O’Neill Society: www.eoneill.com
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