Robert Edmond Jones, Lee Simonson, and Cleon Throckmorton added to Belasco's developments in scenic design. Young energetic intellectuals began forming experimental theatre groups to encourage good productions and good playwrights. Lawrence Langner, Helen Westley, Philip Moeller, and Edward Goodman formed the Washington Square Players in 1914 in New York; George "Jig" Cook, Susan Glaspell, and friends formed the Provincetown Players in 1915. The catalyst and symbol of this collection of talent, the rejection of melodrama, and the establishment of American drama became Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, America's first great playwright. His career, so tied to this generation of theatrical personnel, should be judged within its historical context, as a reaction against melodrama and a search for a theatrical aesthetic to replace it.
O'Neill was born into the very theatrical world he would help to displace. He was born in a New York hotel on Forty-third and Broadway on 16 October 1888. His father, James O'Neill, Sr., who had worked with James A. Herne and David Belasco in the early 1880s, was then on tour. O'Neill, Sr., spent most of his career playing the title role in The Count of Monte Cristo (1846), a melodrama adapted from Alexandre Dumas's novel. Eugene, since he grew up with melodrama, knew its dangers and limitations.
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