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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.
