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Simply Streep is your premiere online resource on Meryl Streep's work on film, television and in the theatre - a career that has won her acclaim to be one of the world's greatest living actresses, winning three Academy Awards for "Kramer vs. Kramer", "Sophie's Choice" and "The Iron Lady". Created in 1999, Simply Streep has built an extensive collection over the past 25 years to discover Miss Streep's body of work through thousands of photographs, articles and video clips. Enjoy your stay and check back soon.
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The Spelling Bee
July 17, 1975
· Eugene O’Neill Theater Center
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Directed by: Harold Scott
· Written by: Martin Ensslin, Edith Oliver (Dramaturgs)
· Literature: Marsha Sheiness
A taut, suspenseful comedy that builds to a shocking climax as four children (written to be played by adults) compete in the televised National Championship runoffs for the best speller in the country. Each mother is determined that her child will win, while the Quizzer intends the show to be a springboard into the "big time."
Cast & Characters
Production Notes
“It was sort of summer camp,” Meryl Streep remembered in an article with the Connecticut Theater Review in 2014. “We had been working so intently at Yale that the O’Neill was like being let out for recess. Theater people are like little moles working in small dark spaces and the O’Neill was, well, outdoors. I got a tan for the first time of my life — and last time, too, probably.” Streep says working that summer was not a detour in her budding career because in 1975 as many as 16 Broadway theaters were closed. “It was really lean pickings,” she says, though off-Broadway and places like the O’Neill — like La Mama and The Public and the Wooster Group — there was a lot of things happening.
