Eugene O'Neill Festival

Every year, in partnership with the Eugene O'Neill Foundation, we bring one of Eugene O'Neill's plays to life on the grounds of his historic Tao House. 

This year, the featured play is The Hairy Ape. Nearly all of Eugene O’Neill’s characters struggle with a world of private pain aggravated by a powerful sense of feeling out of place. Like the playwright himself, they long to find a sense of belonging. Often these characters, after reflection, choose retreat. They choose to escape a painful existence by disengaging from the world around them. But one of O’Neill’s desperate misfits takes a different tack. Robert “Yank” Smith in The Hairy Ape finds himself equally out of place and in pain, but instead of manufacturing a private refuge, he barrels headfirst into the world around him seeking to prove how he fits, not how to escape the world. Driven by an unmatched desire to find where he belongs, Yank is Eugene O’Neill’s ultimate seeker.

There are no tours of Tao House on performance dates.