George Cram Cook

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George Cram Cook
Harvard
OccupationTheatre Producer
Known forProvincetown Players
Spouses
ChildrenNilla Cram Cook
Harl Cook
Signature

George Cram Cook or Jig Cook (October 7, 1873 – January 14, 1924) was an American theatre producer, director, playwright, novelist, poet, and university professor. Believing it was his personal mission to inspire others, Cook led the founding of the Provincetown Players on Cape Cod in 1915; their "creative collective"[1] was considered the first modern American theatre company.[2] During his seven-year tenure with the group, Cook oversaw the production of nearly one-hundred new plays by fifty American playwrights.[3] He is particularly remembered for producing the first plays of Eugene O'Neill, along with those of Cook's wife Susan Glaspell, and several other noted writers.

While teaching English literature at the

Iowa Writers Workshop
was founded.

Biography

Cook wrote: "I was born and raised in

University of Heidelberg in 1894 and at the University of Geneva
the following year.

Upon completing these studies, Cook returned to Iowa. He taught English literature and classics at the University of Iowa from 1895 until 1899. He also taught an early creative writing course, which he called "Verse Making".[4] [page needed] During the 1902 academic year, Cook was an English professor at Stanford University.

It was not until the 1950s that

Iowa Writer's Workshop, which has gained renown.[5][6][7]

In Davenport, Cook associated with other young writers in what was informally referred to as the

Davenport group. Among them was writer Susan Glaspell
. He divorced his second wife, Molly Price, with whom he had two children Nilla (b. 1908) and Harlan "Harl" (b. 1910) and he and Glaspell married in 1913.

To escape community gossip and seek larger world for their work, the couple moved to New York City, where they lived in Greenwich Village. In the summer of 1915 they went to Provincetown, Massachusetts for the season, as did many other writers and artists from the Village. Cook was among the founders of the Provincetown Players that year, an important step in the development of American theatre. The group would perform works by Cook and Glaspell, as well as the first plays of Eugene O'Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay, among others. Cook would lead the Provincetown Players until 1919, at which time he took a sabbatical. Although he returned to the group in 1920, internal wrangling and his own frustration led to his effectively abandoning the cooperative.

Later years

Wife Susan Glaspell with Cook wearing his fustanella. Pictured also is Cook's dog from which he contracted a fatal disease.

In 1922, Cook and his family moved to

New York Times
.

He is buried at Delphi in a small cemetery within hundreds of feet of the ruins of the famous Temple of Apollo, home of the oracle. So beloved was Cook by the locals that the Greek government allowed a stone from the temple foundation to be used as his grave marker.[9] Years later his daughter Nilla Cram Cook was buried beside him.

Partial bibliography

Plays

  • (1914) Suppressed Desires; co-written with Susan Glaspell.
  • (1915) Change Your Style.
  • (1918) The Athenian Women.
  • (1918) Tickless Time; co-written with Susan Glaspell.
  • (1921) The Spring.

Novels

  • (1903) Roderick Taliaferro: A Story of Maximilian's Empire.
  • (1911) The Chasm.

Poetry

Non-fiction

  • (1899) Company B of Davenport.

Further reading

  • Glaspell, Susan. The Road to the Temple. New York: Frederick A. Stokes and Company, 1927. (A posthumous biography of Cook.)
  • Ben-Zvi, Linda (2005). Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times. Oxford University Press.
    ISBN 978-0-19-511506-2
    .
  • Sarlos, Robert K. Jig Cook and the Provincetown Players: Theatre in Ferment. University of Massachusetts Press (1982).
  • Kenton, Edna. The Provincetown Players and the Playwrights' Theatre, 1915-1922. McFarland & Company (2004).

References

  1. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.1984.0703_65.x
    .
  2. ^ Ben-Zvi, Linda. "Preface." Preface. Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times. Oxford University Press, 2005. Ix.
  3. ^ "History of the Provincetown Playhouse". www.provincetownplayhouse.com.
  4. ^ Sarah Cohen, School of Unlikeness: The Creative Writing Workshop and American Poetry, PhD dissertation, 2012, University of Washington
  5. ^ A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, ed. Robert Dana, University of Iowa Press, 1999, p226
  6. ^ S. Wilbers, The Iowa Writers Workshop: Origins, Emergence and Growth, University of Iowa Press, 1980, p35
  7. ^ Menand, Louis (June 1, 2009). "Show or Tell". newyorker.com.
  8. ^ "JAMES LIGHT DIES; O'NEILL ASSOCIATE; Staged Playwright's Works With Provincetown Group". The New York Times. February 12, 1964. p. 33.
  9. ISBN 9780870233494
    .

External links

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