* Eugene O'Neil:
    Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism
    He was the son of Irish actor James O'Neill and Ella Quinlan. Because of his father's profession, O'Neill was sent to a Catholic boarding school where he found his only solace in books.
    O'Neill spent his summers in New London, Connecticut. After being suspended from Princeton University, he spent several years at sea, during which he suffered from depression and alcoholism. O'Neill's parents and elder brother Jamie (who drank himself to death at the age of 45) died within three years of one another, and O'Neill turned to writing as a form of escape. Despite his depression he had a deep love for the sea, and it became a prominent theme in most of his plays, several of which are set onboard ships like the ones that he worked on.
    His involvement with the Provincetown Players began in mid-1916. O'Neill is said to have arrived for the summer in Provincetown with "a trunk full of plays." Susan Glaspell describes what was probably the first ever reading of Bound East for Cardiff which took place in the living room of Glaspell and her husband George Cram Cook's home on Commercial Street, adjacent to the wharf (pictured) that was used by the Players for their theatre. Glaspell writes in The Road to the Temple, "So Gene took Bound East for Cardiff out of his trunk, and Freddie Burt read it to us, Gene staying out in the dining-room while reading went on. He was not left alone in the dining-room when the reading had finished." The Provincetown Players performed many of O'Neill's early works in the their theaters both in Provincetown and on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Some of these early plays began downtown and then moved to Broadway.

* The Emperor Jones:
The Emperor Jones is a 1920 play by American dramatist, Eugene O'Neill which tells the tale of Brutus Jones, an African-American man who kills a man, goes to prison, escapes to a Caribbean island, and sets himself up as emperor. The play recounts his story in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the forest in an attempt to escape former subjects who have rebelled against him. The play displays an uneasy mix of expressionism and realism.
The play is divided into eight scenes. Scenes 2 through 7 are from the point of view of Jones, and no other character speaks. The first and last scenes feature a character named Smithers, a white trader who appears to be part of illegal activities. In the first scene, Smithers is told about the rebellion by an old woman, and then has a lengthy conversation with Jones. In the last scene, Smithers converses with Lem, the leader of the rebellion. Smithers has mixed feelings about Jones, though he generally has more respect for Jones than for the rebels. During this scene, Jones is killed by a silver bullet, which was the only way that the rebels believed Jones could be killed, and the way in which Jones planned to kill himself if he was captured.
In Eugene O'Neil's play, "The Emperor Jones", the theme is based on a moral; one should not pretend to be someone- one is not. Multiple repercussions may occur to someone who denies his/her background and race. Brutus Jones, the main character, assumes the persona of a free white man (Jones was really black and was supposed to be in slavery during that time). Because of Jones' denial, he is haunted by numerous illusions of his black heritage. He cannot free himself of these images and they finally succeed in forcing him to admit that he is black. Unfortunately, it is too late and he is finally killed by natives, after he is accused of plotting against his people.

O'Neil introduces the theme of denial effectively. In the opening scene of the play, it is clear to the audience, from a nineteenth century perspective, that Brutus Jones' physical features oppose his personal representation of himself. Jones, a colored man, was expected to be a slave during the eighteen hundreds. Circumstances permit him to present himself as someone else and he claims to be a white man. This is how the reader meets him in the first scene.

After O'Neil presents his theme of denial, he introduces subsequent scenes that are intended to arouse guilt within Brutus and force to face the truth about his identity. One apparition Jones encounters is a gang of Negroes chained, working on the road supervised by a white man. The
Anticipation of the audience is that Jones will assist the white man with managing the slaves. Instead, Jones is ordered to work; subconsciously, he proceeds to the slave work with his fellow natives. Jones finally realizes his actions and shoots the apparition, which immediately disappears.

Jones experiences a similar illusion later of chained blacks, sitting in rows, wailing, awaiting their slavery. Intuitively, Jones joins their rhythm and swaying and his cry rises louder than the others. This illusion leaves on its own and Jones advances through the forest. These two apparitions demonstrate that inside, Jones really understands that he is colored, but he does not want to admit it.

The next two of Jones' illusions display that the other people realize that Jones is black which aggravates him even more. First, Jones confronts a slave auction. He believes that he is merely a spectator, until he realizes that it is he, who is being auctioned. As a result, Jones loses control and goes wild. Finally, Jones witnesses a religious sacrifice, one similar to his native religion. It is not until Jones realizes that the witch doctor is offering him as a sacrifice, to be eaten by the crocodile, that Jones loses control once again.

O'Neil presents a theme of denial in The Emperor Jones. O'Neil teaches that denial of one's heritage is a dangerous situation that may result in apparitions and death. He suggests a cure to self-denial if it's not too late. O'Neil implies that if the people associated with such a person familiarize him/her with his/her real identity, he/she might be saved. Unfortunately, the natives were too fearful of Jones to express such feelings. It wasn't until Jones was confronted by the people of his illusions and identified by them as a black person, that he admitted to being colored. At this point it was too late for Jones to turn back, and it ensued in his death.