GHOSTS OF EUGENE O’NEILL’S PAST RISE

“The Haunted One” is a ghost story--of sorts. The new stage drama, debuting tonight at Orange Coast College, tracks the private specters that shaped the public life and works of playwright Eugene O’Neill.

John Ferzacca, associate professor of theater at OCC, has spent the past eight years researching O’Neill, and the result is a 90-minute collection of excerpts from 25 O’Neill plays, connected by biographical material tracing the evolution of the artist and his view of life, which Ferzacca will stage in the OCC Drama Lab through Oct. 19.

When O’Neill died in 1953, he left a legacy that included “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Desire Under the Elms, “Mourning Becomes Electra,” “A Moon for the Misbegotten” and “The Iceman Cometh.” More about O’Neill is revealed through his plays than in his public interviews, letters, notebooks and diaries, according to Ferzacca. O’Neill was awarded four Pulitzer Prizes and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. His work reflects his private demons--his anxiety about God and religion, the aftershocks of a chaotic childhood and a volatile family life; his inability to show affection, and a rootlessness that kept him endlessly searching for a permanent home.

The recurring theme in O’Neill’s work--that mankind is doomed to failure, but the struggle itself is noble--keeps his work alive today, Ferzacca said. “I think that one of the reasons he is so popular is that he was such a tormented person, and we have always been, particularly in theater, drawn to that suffering soul,” Ferzacca continued.

“He writes for actors; actors love that kind of misery. He deals with strong passions; he deals with things in full color. There is certainly irony, but there is also this wonderful, huge canvas that he paints on that may be missing in theater today.”

But ironically, Ferzacca added, O’Neill’s work is rarely produced today, especially at the college level. “It seems to me that at his best, he was the most powerful playwright that I’ve ever read,” said Ferzacca, whose admiration for O’Neill dates back to his own college drama-student days. “However, his plays are so long and so verbose that theaters, I think, are very reluctant to do many of them.

“He defied so many traditions when he wrote, in terms of style. He was the first to deal with Freudian psychology, but when he did it, he did it in ‘Strange Interlude,’ which is a seven-hour play. . . . So it seems to me the best kind of tribute--and really, this is an appreciation of O’Neill as much as anything else--is to find those great moments, the best moments in his plays, (and) weave them together.”

Ferzacca, 46, has combined teaching and writing plays for the past 10 years, and in that time has had five of his plays published. “The Haunted One” started as one of his earliest projects, but locating the material he needed didn’t pose nearly as many problems as trying to obtain the rights to stage it.

“While Carlotta (O’Neill, the playwright’s widow) was still alive, she insisted that plays only be done in their entirety or not at all. In fact, you could never be allowed to cut. I remember when I did ‘Long Day’s Journey’ at Michigan State, we had to send an audiotape of the performance to her to check that no lines were eliminated,” Ferzacca said. Today, O’Neill’s work is owned by Yale University, and Ferzacca was able to work out an agreement for a yearlong option with the trustee of the O’Neill estate.

He is also directing the OCC production, but after endless rewrites, acres of index cards and weeks of rehearsals, he’s still inspired by the playwright.

“I haven’t gotten tired of O’Neill. Each night (in rehearsal), it’s a nice discovery as the actors get closer to it. In fact, now we’re just beginning to enjoy it. It was pretty imposing to start with, for me as well as them.”