Stage Directions Only
A Long Day's Journey into Night is much shorter if the actors just perform the stage directions. But would it make any sense? Or could it make more?
Eugene O’Neill won a posthumous Pulitzer for this autobiographical play about the fame, shame, illness and drink that plagued his family. He didn’t want it published or performed until after his death, and/so he wrote deeper and more detailed stage directions than I have ever seen in a play.
Stage directions let the writer talk directly to the actors and director. They’re how writers try to clarify their vision, and exert as much control as possible over performance. It’s unfashionable to write heavy-handed stage directions - Shakespeare wrote none at all. How an actor should perform a scene is meant to be clear from the dialogue - and/or open to creative interpretation. Some actors take great pride in ignoring stage directions, or do the exact opposite.
I read the stage directions in Long Day’s Journey into Night and thought two things.
How could anyone possibly play them? e.g “Suddenly and startlingly one sees in her face the girl she had once been, not a ghost of the dead, but still…