Performance run time of Long Day’s Journey Into Night is approximately two hours and fifty minutes, including one ten-minute intermission.

Run time does not include the music preshow beginning 15 minutes before curtain, or the post-show discussion.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

by Eugene O’Neill

PRODUCTION SPONSORS: 
Pat and John Hemann

Directed by Cynthia Meier
Music Direction by Russell Ronnebaum

September 12–29, 2019

Thursday–Saturday 7:30 P.M., Saturday & Sunday 2:00 P.M.

A masterful image of a day in the Tyrone household, struggling with alcoholism, morphine addiction, and regret, as they reflect on love, dreams, and roads not taken. One of the most lauded of American plays, this deeply personal play received both the Tony Award for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize.

Discussion with the cast and director follows all performances

The Rogue Theatre at The Historic Y
300 East University Boulevard

Free Off-Street Parking
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Supporting Materials

Free Open Talk
“On Reading Eugene O’Neill”

On Saturday, September 7, Associate Professor Patrick Baliani of the UA Honors College delved into O’Neill’s many plays and his experimentations with form, providing a holistic context for The Rogue’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Listen to a podcast of the talk.

For more background on the play, check out Jerry James’ essay
“The Long Voyage Home: The Lifelong Quest of Eugene O’Neill”

This open talk is supported in part by a generous gift from Andy & Cammie Watson.

Note that all our upcoming season’s plays will be preceded by a free open talk at 2:00 P.M. on the Saturday before the run begins, and you are invited! Talks can fill up, so plan to arrive early.

Poster
View the full-sized poster for the play

Press

Director offers three reasons to watch Rogue’s O’Neill play

Preview of Long Day’s Journey Into Night in the September 5th Arizona Daily Star

Read others’ reviews of The Rogue Theatre, or write your own review on TripAdvisor!

Direction

Cynthia Meier (Director) is Co-Founder and Managing and Associate Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre where she has adapted and directed James Joyce’s The Dead, Kafka’s Metamorphosis and F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age, and directed King Lear, Bach at Leipzig, Celia, A Slave, The White Snake, Miss Julie, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Merchant of Venice, Waiting for Godot, Jerusalem, Betrayal, Arcadia, Richard III, Journey to the West, The Winter’s Tale, Shipwrecked!, New-Found-Land, Old Times, The Tempest, Naga Mandala, The Four of Us, Othello, Animal Farm, Orlando, Happy Days, The Good Woman of Setzuan, The Fever and The Cherry Orchard. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of Arizona. She is co-founder of Bloodhut Productions, a company performing original monologues and comedy improvisation, which toured throughout the western United States. She also directed The Seagull (featuring Ken Ruta) for Tucson Art Theatre, and she directed Talia Shire in Sister Mendelssohn and Edward Herrmann in Beloved Brahms for Chamber Music Plus Southwest. Cynthia received the Mac Award for Best Director, Drama for Richard III in 2013, and for Arcadia in 2014. She has been nominated for seven Mac Awards for Best Actress from the Arizona Daily Star, and in 2008, she received the Mac Award for Best Actress for her performance of Stevie in Edward Albee’s The Goat at The Rogue Theatre.

Cynthia Meier’s direction of Long Day’s Journey into Night is supported in part by a generous gift from Betsey Parlato & David Zucker.

Notes from the Director

“At the final curtain, there they still are, trapped within each other by the past, each guilty and at the same time innocent, scorning, loving, pitying each other, understanding and yet not understanding at all, forgiving but still doomed never to be able to forget.”

Eugene O’Neill used these words to describe the ending of what would become his most widely known and beloved play, Long Day’s Journey into Night. O’Neill composed this autobiographical play near the end of his remarkable career, during which he wrote over 30 full-length plays. It was his intention that Long Day’s Journey would not be published until 25 years after his death, and that it would never be performed. His widow decided otherwise, and the play was first produced in Sweden in 1956, less than three years after his death. A Broadway production soon followed, winning the Tony Award for Best Play that same year. O’Neill was posthumously awarded his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play in 1957.

Set in 1912, the play centers on the figure of Mary Tyrone, a woman who is addicted to morphine (a prescribed opioid pain reliever). Her husband and two sons struggle with the effects of the drug on the pivotal woman in their lives, at the same time as they drink themselves into oblivion recounting past regrets and old wounds.

Almost everything in the play is based on the real life of Eugene O’Neill. He grew up on the road with his father and mother and older brother, Jamie, as his famous actor-father, James O’Neill, toured the U.S. in The Count of Monte Cristo. They spent their summers in New London, Connecticut, in the home that became known as “Monte Cristo Cottage.” This is where Long Day’s Journey takes place—in a single room on a single day. O’Neill gives himself the name of Edmund in the play, but the rest of his family keep their real given names.

O’Neill dedicated the play to his wife, Carlotta Monterey. In the dedication he called it a “play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood.” Over the course of our rehearsals, we have come to reflect on our own families, our own brushes with addiction and recovery, our own “old sorrows.”

The great gift of drama is what it evokes and awakens in each of us as we watch a play. We wish you gentle acceptance of what you may find within yourself as you watch this family’s dark struggles.

— Cynthia Meier, Director

Playwright

Eugene Gladstone O’Neill (1888-1953) was an American dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. His masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night (produced posthumously in 1956), is at the apex of a long string of great plays, including Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943) and The Iceman Cometh (1946). O’Neill was born into the theatre. His father, James O’Neill, was a successful touring actor in the last quarter of the 19th century whose most famous role was that of the Count of Monte Cristo in a stage adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel. His mother, Ella, accompanied her husband back and forth across the country, settling down only briefly for the birth of her first son, James, Jr., and of Eugene.

Eugene, who was born in a hotel, spent his early childhood in hotel rooms, on trains, and backstage. Although he later deplored the nightmare insecurity of his early years and blamed his father for the difficult, rough-and-tumble life the family led—a life that resulted in his mother’s drug addiction—Eugene had the theatre in his blood. He was also, as a child, steeped in the peasant Irish Catholicism of his father and the more genteel, mystical piety of his mother, two influences, often in dramatic conflict, which account for the high sense of drama and the struggle with God and religion that distinguish O’Neill’s plays. O’Neill was the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the only American playwright ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through his efforts, the American theatre grew up during the 1920s, developing into a cultural medium that could take its place with the best in American fiction, painting, and music. Until hisBeyond the Horizonwas produced, in 1920, Broadway theatrical fare, apart from musicals and an occasional European import of quality, had consisted largely of contrived melodrama and farce. O’Neill saw the theatre as a valid forum for the presentation of serious ideas. Imbued with the tragic sense of life, he aimed for a contemporary drama that had its roots in the most powerful of ancient Greek tragedies—a drama that could rise to the emotional heights of Shakespeare. For more than 20 years, O’Neill set the pace for the blossoming of the Broadway theatre.

Cast

Holly Griffith (Cathleen) is a 6th year member of the Resident Acting Ensemble at The Rogue. Favorite productions include Middletown, Much Ado About Nothing, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Three Tall Women, Celia A Slave, A House of Pomegranates, The White Snake, Uncle Vanya, Angels in America, By the Bog of Cats and Hamlet. She also serves as a Box Officer and Co-Producer of the John & Joyce Ambruster Play-Reading Series at The Rogue. Holly holds an MA in English Literature from the University of Arizona where she now teaches in the department of Theatre, Film, & Television. She also serves as Artistic Associate and Director at the Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre, and maintains a fierce interest in the culture and literary tradition of Ireland.
Holly Griffith’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from Clay Shirk. 

Hunter Hnat (Edmund Tyrone) is grateful to be in his second season as a member of The Rogue Resident Acting Ensemble. You may have seen him in previous Rogue productions as the Mechanic in Middletown, Ezekiel Cheever in The Crucible, Son of Three Blind Queens (and others) in The Secret in the Wings, Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Andrea in Galileo, Oswald in King Lear, Steindorff in Bach at Leipzig, and Ensemble for A House of Pomegranates. He has also been a part of The Rogue’s staged readings of The Illusion, No Exit, and Cloud 9. Other credits include Jokanaan in Salomé (The Scoundrel & Scamp), Ensemble and Romeo U/S in Romeo and Juliet (Arizona Theatre Company), Boyfriend in How the House Burned Down (Live Theatre Workshop) as well as several other workshops and readings. He is a U of A alumnus with his BFA in Musical Theatre, class of 2015. Enjoy the show!
Hunter Hnat’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from John & Diane Wilson.

Ryan Parker Knox (Jamie Tyrone) continues this season, his 7th in The Rogue’s Resident Acting Ensemble, with Long Day’s Journey Into Night being his 37th company production. Audiences will remember him from Arcadia (2014 Mac Award winner for drama), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Uncle Vanya (2016 Mac Award winner for comedy), Jerusalem, King Lear, Galileo, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Much Ado About Nothing, The Secret in the Wings, The Crucible, and most recently Middletown, among others. Ryan hails from South Dakota, but spent over a decade in Minnesota’s Twin Cities and surrounding regions where he appeared in over 90 productions. He received his BFA with an Acting Emphasis from the University of South Dakota in 1999. Ryan would like to thank the patrons and board of The Rogue for their never-ending support of art and of artists, and would like to thank his dearest loved ones for always having his back. Here’s to another inspired season of creativity and imagination!
Ryan Parker Knox’s performance is supported in part by generous gifts from Sally Krusing and Bill & Barb Dantzler.

Theresa McElwee (Mary Tyrone) has appeared on Broadway in the Tony-award winning productions of The Heidi Chronicles and I’m Not Rappaport, and at Lincoln Center in Northeast Local. Off-Broadway credits include, the Obie-award winning Jeffrey at the Minetta Lane, Hyde in Hollywood at Playwrights’ Horizons and for PBS American Playhouse, Portfolio at Manhattan Punchline, Macbeth at Shelter Theatre Company, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom at Provincetown Playhouse (where many of Eugene O’Neill’s early works were produced), Much Ado About Nothing (for Emperical Rogue at the cell), Spike Heels (Ensemble Studio Theatre) and The House of Yes (Magellan Theatre). Regional work includes Edith Stein (GeVa Theatre), Spike Heels (Philadelphia Theatre Company), Social Security (Burt Reynolds’ Jupiter Theatre) and Romeo and Juliet (Playmakers Rep). Theresa holds an M.F.A. in Acting from the Yale School of Drama, is a certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and proud member of AEA, SAG-AFTRA, VASTA and the National Alliance of Acting Teachers. She teaches Voice and Speech at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, HB Studio and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. Theresa is so grateful for the opportunity to work on this great play with these great artists.
Theresa’s performance is supported in part by generous gifts from Andy & Cammie Watson and Ward & Judy Wallingford.

Joseph McGrath (James Tyrone) is Co-Founder and Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre and has appeared in The Crucible, The Secret in the Wings, Galileo (2018 Mac Award for Best Actor), King Lear, Bach at Leipzig, Celia, A Slave, Macbeth, Penelope, The White Snake, Angels in America Part One, Tales of the Jazz Age, Miss Julie, Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Merchant of Venice, Waiting for Godot, Jerusalem, Awake and Sing, Arcadia, Measure for Measure, Richard III, The Night Heron, Journey to the West, The Winter’s Tale, The New Electric Ballroom, Shipwrecked!, Major Barbara, New-Found-Land, Old Times, The Tempest, Ghosts, Naga Mandala, Othello, Krapp’s Last Tape, A Delicate Balance (2009 Mac Award for Best Actor), Animal Farm, Orlando, Happy Days, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Red Noses, The Goat, The Cherry Orchard, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Endymion, The Dead, and The Fever. Joe is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Drama and has toured with John Houseman’s Acting Company. He has performed with the Utah Shakespearean Festival and has been a frequent performer with Ballet Tucson appearing in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and for seventeen years as Herr Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker. He has also performed with Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Opera, and Arizona Onstage. Joe owns, with his wife Regina Gagliano, Sonora Theatre Works, which produces theatrical scenery and draperies.
Joseph McGrath’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from Meg & Peter Hovell.

Music

Preshow Music

Nocturne in E Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2 – Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849)
Prelude in D Flat Major, Op. 28, No. 15 “Raindrop Prelude” – Frédéric Chopin
Ave Maria (Piano Solo) – Franz Schubert (1797–1828), arr. by Russell Ronnebaum (b. 1986)
Music video at: www.RRonnebaum.com/watch

Show Music

Prelude in A Major Op. 28, No. 7 – Chopin
Prelude in B minor Op. 28, No. 6 – Chopin
Nocturne in F minor Op. 55, No. 1 – Chopin
Prelude in D Flat Major, Op. 28, No. 15 “Raindrop Prelude” – Chopin
Prelude in C Major, BWV 846 – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1850)
Ave Maria  – Franz Schubert
“In Dreams” from Songs of Travel – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
Waltz in A minor, Op. Posth. – Chopin
“Whither Must I Wander?” from Songs of Travel – R. Vaughan Williams
Ave Maria – Bach/Charles Gounod (1818–1893)
Prelude in E minor Op. 28, No. 4 – Chopin

        Pianist              Russell Ronnebaum

Music is supported in part by a generous gift from Marianne Leedy.

Russell Ronnebaum (Music Director, Composer, Pianist) is most excited to be serving as The Rogue Theatre’s newly appointed Director of Music and Resident Composer. Russell holds a Master of Music degree in collaborative piano from the University of Arizona where he studied under Dr. Paula Fan. He currently serves as the assistant director of music at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in Oro Valley, as well as the staff accompanist for the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. As a classically trained pianist, Russell has performed with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Artifact Dance Company, Arizona Repertory Theatre, and as a concerto soloist with the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. Russell made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2016 performing the music of composer Dan Forrest. Past credits include The Rogue’s 2019 production of Much Ado About Nothing (Music Director, Pianist, and Composer) and The Secret in the Wings (Vocal Director). Recent composition commissions and premieres include music for voice, choir, piano, string orchestra, and dance. Recordings, sheet music, and upcoming concert dates can be found at www.RRonnebaum.com.

Music Director’s Notes

“I had two dreams. To be a nun, that was the more beautiful one. To become a concert pianist, that was the other.”

—Mary Tyrone from Long Day’s Journey Into Night; Act 3

In selecting the music, I chose to help Mary fulfill her dreams.

Sisters (nuns) spend a great deal of time in devotion to the faith and often draw guidance and strength from the Blessed Virgin Mary. Two of the most recognizable musical settings of the Ave Maria (the Latin text for the “Hail Mary” prayer) are by Franz Schubert and Charles Gounod. The latter by Gounod began as an improvisation over Bach’s Prelude in C Major, BWV 846.

There are many staples of a concert pianist’s repertoire, but one composer leapt out above the rest; Frédéric Chopin. His compositional output includes a wealth of revolutionary piano music: Preludes, Waltzes, Nocturnes, Etudes, and Ballades…among others. Many of the works for this production were chosen for their dramatic underpinnings and favor the minor key signatures, which are naturally dreary.

The Tyrone family lives in a shared world of addiction, frustration, and regret. To augment this reality, the musical themes are often open-ended, melancholy and cadence with unsatisfactory resolutions. This lack of resolution continues beyond the final curtain, and we’re left with a lingering portrait of the family’s despair.

—Russell Ronnebaum, Music Director and Pianist

Designers

Production Staff

Deanna Fitzgerald (Lighting Designer) is a professional Lighting Designer and member of United Scenic Artists, as well as a Professor and head of lighting design and technology at the University of Arizona, where she also serves as the Associate Director for theatre programs and the Director of Graduate Studies. Her lighting design credits include a range of theatre, dance, opera, circus-themed entertainment, puppets, architectural lighting and more. She is a registered yoga and meditation teacher and conducts classes and workshops focused on using these and other “quietive” practices to enrich creative processes. Some of Deanna’s career highlights include the lighting designs for STOMP OUT LOUD, the Las Vegas version of the internationally acclaimed STOMP, for whom she also toured for six years as lighting director; Cirque Mechanics: Boom Town, which toured for two years with an off-Broadway appearance at The New Victory Theatre; and Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo US Tour. Deanna has been smitten with her Rogue family since 2014 when she designed their extraordinary creation Jerusalem, and has since designed Waiting for Godot, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Miss Julie, Bridge of San Luis Rey, Tales from the Jazz Age, Uncle Vanya, Penelope, Macbeth, Celia A Slave, Bach at Leipzig,Three Tall Women, King Lear, Galileo, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Secret in the Wings and The Crucible. She is grateful for every moment she gets to spend making things with them and for ME Peter Bleasby and the returning Associate LD Megan Coy whose collaborations make that possible.

Megan Coy (Resident Stage Manager) is thrilled to return to her hometown to stage manage for The Rogue Theatre! Her first Rogue production was this summer’s Middletown. She spent the last five years working in marketing, stage management, and lighting design at The Magik Theatre in San Antonio, TX. Prior to settling in San Antonio, Megan was the stage manager and lighting director on the first North American tour of Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo Live! She graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, training in stage management, lighting design, and dramaturgy. She has worked with Williamstown Theatre Festival, Alpine Theatre Project, and local theater and dance companies in Tucson and San Antonio. Megan is a proud mom to Eleanor and wants to thank Casey for his constant love and support.
Megan Coy’s stage management is supported in part by a generous gift from Andy & Cammie Watson.

Amy Novelli (Scenic Artist) is originally from Ohio and Pennsylvania, where she received her Cum Laude BFA from the Columbus (Ohio) College of Art & Design in 1987 and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1994. Amy Beth Novelli’s work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin Germany, Portland OR, Pittsburgh, Scottsdale and Tucson Arizona, Santa Fe New Mexico as well as several cities in Ohio, Wyoming, Utah and Oregon. Her painting “High Desert” was purchased for the permanent collection of the Wyoming State Museum from the Governor’s Award Exhibition in 2015. Novelli has lived in New York City where she worked as a sculptor for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade Studio as well as New Orleans and Berlin. She has worked as the Carnegie, Warhol and Dubois (Wyoming) Museums and taught at the University of Arizona and Pima Community College. Her work as lead painter for Larson Company’s Christmas and Easter Windows for Marshal-Fields Department Stores in Chicago and Minneapolis painting the Alice in Wonderland theme won the 1999 “Best Windows in the Country” award. Amy held the position of Charge Scenic Artist for four years at the Arizona Theatre Company, supervised four Public Art Projects with High School Youth for the Tucson Pima Arts Council and since 2015 Amy has completed 5 large scale murals in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona and Washington. She continues to paint as a Charge Artist/Scenic Painter for the Rogue Theatre, UA Repertory Theatre, Arizona Broadway Theatre. Her fine art work has been exhibited at several Tucson Galleries and recently at the Tucson International Airport, Mission Coffee Imports and forthcoming at Tucson Audubon Society Agua Caliente Gallery. Amy Novelli has been living in Tucson since 1996. In addition to her scenic design/painting and fine art projects, Novelli gentles wild BLM horses for adoption through the Mustang Heritage Foundations TIP Program and is an avid rider and wilderness adventurer.
Amy Novelli’s scenic art is supported in part by a generous gift from Paul Winick & Ronda Lustman.

Nanalee Raphael (Costume Manager) has known from age 5 that she would work in theatre. Of course, she thought it would be as an actor, not as someone who flings fabric around. She feels blessed that she has always been employed in costuming, for both professional and academic theatres, and has never had to have a "day job". Until moving to Tucson in 1995, she was peripatetic in her work situations, desiring to work with theatres all over the country. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee but was lured by the bright lights of Chicago and so moved there to teach at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Following her husband to central Illinois, she then wangled a position at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she created a successful costume rental program. She then gave up all that greenery to come to Tucson to teach and design at the University of Arizona. She has worked as a costume designer, costume director and/or draper in professional theatres in Michigan, (Hope Summer Repertory, Holland), Wisconsin (American Players Theatre, Spring Green), Illinois (Goodman, Wisdom Bridge, and Steppenwolf, Chicago), New York (The Public, NYC), Arizona (ART & ATC, Tucson), at Shakespeare Festivals in Vermont and New Jersey, and California (The Old Globe, San Diego). She received both her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Costume Design and Technology from Syracuse University. She is one of the "Pionering Seven", the first group of women to study full-time at Dartmouth College.

Peter Bleasby (Master Electrician) lit his first show at 13. Professionally, he was with BBC-TV for several years, and was an assistant to UK lighting designer Richard Pilbrow during the inaugural production of the National Theatre (Hamlet, directed by Olivier.) He transferred to architectural lighting, but maintained his theatre interests by lighting many shows on both sides of the Atlantic. When the Rogue established itself at the Historic “Y” in 2009, he volunteered for the initial season, returning in 2013 with lighting designer Don Fox, and later working with Deanna Fitzgerald. He devised the installation of the permanent wiring system that enables lighting teams to devote more time to the creative process. For the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation he directs the technical and logistical aspects of fundraisers, including the fashion show Moda Provocateur.

Susan Collinet (House Manager) earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Arizona in 2008. Decades before returning to college as a non-traditional student, Susan spent twenty years in amateur theater, mostly on the East coast, as well as in Brussels, Belgium in the American Theater of Brussels, and the Theatre de Chenois in Waterloo. She has worked in such positions as a volunteer bi-lingual guide in the Children’s Museum of Brussels, the Bursar of a Naturopathic Medical school in Tempe, Arizona, an entrepreneur with two “Susan’s of Scottsdale” hotel gift shops in Scottsdale, Arizona, and as the volunteer assistant Director of Development of the Arizona Aids Project in Phoenix. Susan continues to work on collections of poetry and non-fiction. Her writing has won awards from Sandscript Magazine, the John Hearst Poetry Contest, the Salem College for Women’s Center for Writing, and was published in a Norton Anthology of Student’s Writing. In addition to being House Manager, Susan serves on the Board of Directors and acts as Volunteer Coordinator for The Rogue.

Our Thanks