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POUND is Sean O'Leary's third play and will receive its professional premiere in the fall of 2004 at The Washington Stage Guild in Washington, DC. It is also scheduled for productions at The Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre, Towngate Theatre, and The Village Theater at Cherry Hill. It was the winner of the 2004 Pittsburgh New Play Festival and was nominated for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. POUND has received readings at Round House Theatre, The Orlando Shakespeare Festival, Catalyst Theatre, and Tri-State Actors Theater. Additional readings are scheduled for Abingdon Theatre in New York and The Playwrights Collective at The Brookfield Theatre for The Arts. The West Virginia Commission on The Arts has recognized POUND by awarding Sean its biennial Fellowship for Drama.
Winner and Production - Pittsburgh New Play Festival, January 2004
Nominated - Williamstown Theatre Festival's L. Arnold Weissberger Award by The Washington Stage Guild
Staged Reading - Round House Theatre, October 2003
Staged Reading - Orlando Shakespeare Festival, January 2004
Staged Reading - Abingdon Theatre, Date TBD
Staged Reading - Tri-State Actors Theatre, June 2003
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of the Pittsburgh New Play Festival production of POUND. January 31, 2004 . Stage Review: W.Va. playwright offers up another insightful drama Festivals of new theater works are most often showcases of promising works in progress, a chance for playwrights to see their words come to life and for actors new on the scene to be seen by the theater community. Sometimes, however, local play festivals discover polished gems.
Last season, Gemini Theater's Pittsburgh New Play Festival showcased a brilliant family drama, "Rain in the Hollow" by West Virginia 's Sean O'Leary. This year, O'Leary is back with his third work, a fully realized full-length drama that should be performed on the finest Equity stages. "Pound" finds one of the 20th century's most influential poets, Ezra Pound, in a psychiatric ward at St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C., in 1958. He's been confined there since World War II on charges of treason stemming from his bombastic and bigoted radio broadcasts on behalf of fascist Italy during the war. While keeping much of the history straight, O'Leary speculates on details regarding the relationship between Pound and his psychologist during the weeks leading to his release. Sharp direction by Jason A. Fleece helps to focus the play on Pound's gradual realization that his arrogance and overt bigotry helped enable fascists to purge, imprison and murder Italy 's Jewish population. Pound is finally released from his confinement tortured with overwhelming guilt, and his psychologist is left facing professional sanctions for the way she "cured" her patient. It's a wonderful piece of writing that challenges audiences to think and works on multiple levels, reminiscent at times of Chaim Potok's "The Chosen." Hal O'Leary, founder and artistic director of Wheeling 's Towngate Theatre and the playwright's father, is well-cast in the title role. He looks strangely similar to the elderly Pound and convincingly captures the poet's coerced and humiliating change in self-perception. The sparring between O'Leary and Point Park graduate Robin Abramson as Pound's doctor ranges from comical to acidic. Through smart dramatic choices, Abramson slowly turns the dagger that her character has slipped between her patient's shoulder blades. Jay Keenan, former head of Duquesne's theater program, and festival veteran Connie Culbertson are believable in supporting roles. With a dozen or more theater awards under his belt for this and previous plays, it's time for playwright Sean O'Leary to break through to America 's prime stages. John Hayes can be reached at jhayes@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1991.
Special to The Washington Post; Friday, November 19, 2004; Page WE24 A ‘Pound’ With Weight SEAN O'LEARY'S new play, "Pound," explores the psyche of poet and social commentator Ezra Pound. Although he is often seen as an unsympathetic figure, given his public support of fascism during World War II, the Washington Stage Guild's production offers a different view. The arrogant poet, one of the most famous patients ever held at Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital, is presented as a sad old man with regrets about his past. Though his own poetry was practically unreadable by even a fairly well-educated audience, Pound had tremendous impact on modern literature, influencing the work of T.S. Eliot and James Joyce. Pound has been called a literary genius, but when it came to politics, his thinking took some strange twists. An ardent supporter of Benito Mussolini, Pound lived in Italy through World War II and made a number of heated, anti-Semitic radio broadcasts upholding the fascist regime. At the war's end, Pound was arrested by the U.S. Army and was to stand trial for treason, the penalty for which was death. Pound's defense claimed the writer was insane and unfit to be tried; thus he was sent to St. Elizabeths, where he remained for 14 years.
"Pound was a fairly overwhelming character who dominated his surroundings and in many respects dominated the hospital," said O'Leary. Conrad Feininger's portrayal reinforces the poet's reputation. An overbearing loudmouth, Pound routinely yells at the staff, calling one kindly, middle-aged nurse "Ole Blue-Hair." He argues with portraits hanging on hospital walls and insults visitors, including fellow poet Archibald MacLeish. A lawyer as well as a writer, MacLeish helped orchestrate Pound's release from St. Elizabeths in 1958. Shortly before he was discharged, however, Pound underwent a profound psychological transformation. According to O'Leary, he became "a very withdrawn person.... I think it's fair to say he was a tortured soul." The play is a fictitious account of what may have caused Pound's breakdown. A young psychiatrist, Mary Polley (Kathleen Coons), arrives at St. Elizabeths determined to "treat" Pound over several days of marathon therapy sessions. Instead of helping him out of his despondency, she psychologically abuses Pound as an act of revenge. The doctor's parents, Italian Jews, were rounded up by the fascists and killed, spurred, in her mind, by Pound's declarations on the radio. "There is some historical basis for the character," O'Leary said of Polley. "Two weeks prior to his discharge over a period of a few days, Pound was seen by a new young woman psychiatrist, but there is no indication . . . that she had any impact on Pound." O'Leary did not research the poet's psychiatric records at St. Elizabeths. Yet during preliminary public readings of the script in Washington, O'Leary encountered people who had known Pound at the hospital, including a number of doctors and a psychiatric nurse. "None of these people specifically said that they had treated Pound, but they had met him," he said. "Believe me, [it] is frightening when somebody stands up in the audience and says, 'Well, I'm a psychiatrist, and I was doing my residency at St. Elizabeths when Ezra Pound was there.'" Another time O'Leary was buttonholed by a doctor who summoned up "incredible memories about what a pain . . . Ezra Pound could be." While at St. Elizabeths, Pound regularly met with an assortment of artists and writers who were eager to hear the writer espouse his radical theories on politics, economy and art. The doctor told O'Leary that Pound was famous for conducting those sessions out on the lawn. "People visiting the hospital [would] enter the grounds, and as they went into a building they would look out over the rolling lawn and see Ezra Pound with his gaggle and immediately assume that it must be a doctor lecturing," O'Leary said. These indirect contacts with Pound's past reaffirm O'Leary's vivid psychological portrait of what the poet may have been like. However, O'Leary is careful to explain that his play is not a biography. "I used the character Ezra Pound . . . to go through a set of circumstances I largely created for him," he said. "The action you see take place on the stage is pure speculation."
From the nominating Letter to The L. Arnold Weissberger Award by John MacDonald, Producing Artistic Director of The Washington Stage Guild. June 17, 2003. POUND was referred to me by Ernie Joselovitz, the recipient of this year’s Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play presented at the Helen Hayes Awards at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Ernie has been a longtime mentor and host to The Playwrights Forum, an organization dedicated to the development of playwrights and playwriting. The fact that Ernie felt so strongly about the play piqued my interest and I felt privileged to direct a reading, with my company members, of what all of us feel is an intense and uniquely theatrical experience. As the Stage Guild is know for its productions of plays of “language
and ideas”, I found POUND fascinating not only in concept,
but in fine, terse, and eminently actable writing. All of the actors
who participated in the reading here in Washington, all Equity members,
agreed that it is one of the finest new scripts we have read in
a number of years. There is clear delineation and development of
character and a through line to the text with a clearly surprising
denouement. I hope that you will consider Mr. O’Leary’s
script very carefully and conclude with me that it is deserving
of recognition.
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