Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.
September 18, 2014 4:02 AM   Subscribe

Trifles is a powerful, brief, one-act play written by Susan Glaspell and published in 1916. It is for this play (and a short story version of it entitled "A Jury of Her Peers") that Glaspell is best known today, but she deserves to be better appreciated: "Her plays received better reviews than those of Eugene O’Neill, and in 1931 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her play Alison’s House [pdf summary]. . . . Glaspell was the co-founder with her husband George Cram Cook of the Provincetown Players (1916-1922), the Little Theatre that did most to promote American dramatists, and her diplomacy and energy held the group together for seven years. It was largely thanks to Glaspell’s intervention that O’Neill’s first plays were performed, and she played a major role in stimulating and encouraging his writing in the following years."
posted by ocherdraco (5 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
I teach this play every year, and every year I learn to love it more.
posted by kewb at 4:09 AM on September 18, 2014 [3 favorites]


Same here, kewb.
posted by kozad at 5:39 AM on September 18, 2014


You know I've taught this as a short story plenty of times and had no idea it was originally a play.

Obvious in hindsight. Also obvious that I need to practice what I preach about doing your research.
posted by notyou at 6:48 AM on September 18, 2014


There was also a filmed version done as a short in 1930. It was a Vitaphone short, so it had sound - not great sound (if you've seen Singing in the Rain, you know why), but it was sound. Here is the IMDB page for the production to confirm its existence: Trifles (1930)

However, because it's after the debut of Mickey Mouse, American copyright laws keep getting extended and keep "such a trifle" in copyright and not available through public domain. The Vitaphone shorts have been preserved and restored by a program at UCLA, and Warner Archive has included Trifles as part of the Vitaphone Varieties: 1926-1930 collection, which can also be purchased on Amazon, I believe.
posted by jkosmicki at 10:43 AM on September 18, 2014 [3 favorites]


This is the only play I read in school that stuck with me.
posted by corb at 3:10 PM on September 18, 2014


« Older It's now or never.   |   I was so tall. You were older then. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments