Adrienne Earle Pender's "N" dramatizes the struggle between playwright
Eugene O'Neill and actor Charles Sidney Gilpin over the inclusion of the
"N" word in the script for O'Neill's first box office hit, The Emperor
Jones. in 1920. The play was turned into a film "The Black Emperor of
Broadway" to be screened in 2020. O'Neill and Gilpin fight from
rehearsal to Broadway run and, eventually, to the London tour. To Eugene
O'Neill, a word is just a word. For Charles Gilpin, those six letters
have the power to unravel everything that he has ever worked for. At
stake for O'Neill? His artistic vision. For Gilpin? His entire career
and family. Eugene O'Neill's groundbreaking 1921 play, The Emperor
Jones, was the first American play that featured an African-American
actor in the lead role on Broadway. Charles S. Gilpin's portrayal of
Emperor Brutus Jones was hailed as "revelatory," and he was named the
finest actor of the age. The opening of The Emperor Jones made stars of
both men; it was O'Neill's first commercial success, and Charles Gilpin
became the toast of the theater world, becoming the first black man to
be honored by the Drama League of New York, But by 1926, O'Neill was a
legend and Gilpin was lost to history. The script of "N" explores the
challenging relationship between Gilpin and O'Neill and how it
ultimately hinged on one word; a word that lifted one of them to the
heights of American theater, and a word that destroyed the other.
