PTown's most educational, fun and informative tour is Cape Cod's best tour value, and the very best way to see the town, from the Pilgrims’ first landing, famous writers and artists, birthplace of American drama to today’s restaurants, shops, galleries and clubs. We'll find charming architecture, lovely gardens, secluded beaches and quaint neighborhoods dating to the 1700s. We'll discover more than 40 points of interest, stories, oddities, photo ops, historic sites and figures all along the way.
Friday, November 4, 2016
Friday, October 14, 2016
Discover Provincetown Celebrates Women's Week with a Special Tour
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| Playwright Susan Glaspell's work has helped women break out of limiting, traditional roles. |
This week, Discover
Provincetown celebrates Women’s
Week with a little extra time on every tour devoted to the remarkable,
pioneering women of our town. Women here have been chipping away at the
proverbial “glass ceiling” since at least the 1700s.
One of these was Susan
Glaspell, a "founder" of the original Provincetown Players,
the little theater company that changed the face of theater in the United
States beginning in the summer of 1915. In fact, Provincetown can rightfully be
called the birthplace of modern American Drama.
Glaspell and several other
women and men were discouraged with the commercial nature of American theater
at that time, and shook things up a bit when they began writing their own
plays. They also broke new ground when they performed Eugene O'Neill's
sea play Bound East for Cardiff the following summer, when O'Neill
arrived here to seek them out, carrying a little trunk of plays he'd
written. His career as a playwright was launched when he met up with
that little ragtag theater troupe just before they went to New York in
September of 1916, to establish the Provincetown Players as a permanent,
year-round company.
In her 2002 book The
Women of Provincetown, 1915-1922, Cheryl Black remarks that the
Provincetown Players have been acknowledged as “one of the first theatre
companies in America in which women achieved prominence in every area of operation.”
Through their work with this fledgling theater company, Susan Glaspell, Mary
Heaton Vorse, Ida Rauh, Neith Boyce, Marguerite Zorach, Louise Bryant, Djuna
Barnes, Edna St. Vincent Millay and others pushed against the barriers that
held women strictly in traditional roles.
Glaspell debuted her own
groundbreaking work that summer of 1916 in her one act play Trifles,
which is still used in theater courses and continues to be held up as a model
for young playwrights. Her work is revered worldwide. In fact, the 100th
anniversary of Trifles
was celebrated last week by the International
Susan Glaspell Society, with a reading of the play and a panel discussion
at NYC’s Metropolitan Playhouse.
Join me on my tour and
learn more about the amazing feats of various Provincetown women who have
shaped our history, and that of the greater world around us.
Happy Women’s Week!
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