Welcome to

The Heritage-O’Neill Theatre Company 

Our company was founded and formed during the summer of 2003 (as The Heritage Theatre Company) and has undergone a couple of changes since our beginning; never, however, veering far off track from what was always our mission: the production of the American classics and the preservation of our cultural history.

The decision to re-name our company and concentrate our productions to the works of Eugene O’Neill and to those playwrights and plays of the American classics from the 1920s-1990s is a natural one. 

First and foremost is that many of Mr. O’Neill’s plays are – in a word – brilliant. He is to American theatre what Shakespeare is to Great Britain's. The difference:  he's ours. He belongs to US.  Scholars and ardent theatre goers have long termed him “The Father of American drama,” and “America’s greatest playwright” for a very good reason. In fact, his most recognized play, “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” has been hailed for decades as “The ‘King Lear’ of American drama.”  Second is that there is no human emotion that O’Neill does not write about, or human failing that he does not explore and have his characters experience. And for whatever reason it might be that Mr. O’Neill’s legacy is not more widely produced on our American stages and taught in our colleges and universities so that future generations are made more aware of him, that more contemporary, younger, multi-generational and multi-ethnic audiences can find something NEW and EXCITING in his writing that they, too, can connect to, and that everyone everywhere can appreciate him as much as they do Shakespeare (and even MORE), it is for this 3^rd reason that we name our company after him and devote ourselves to this goal.

The American classics of the 1920s – 1990s spawned such great American playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, David Mamet, and others. They laid the foundation upon which others later followed. “The Iceman Cometh,” “Death of a Salesman,” “The Grapes of Wrath,” “A Streetcar Named ‘Desire’ “, “The Little Foxes,” "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," etc., belong to an era in American theatre known as “The Golden Age of America Drama,” or as one actress so correctly put it recently during her audition for us, “When plays were worth going to the theatre for.”

These plays … these playwrights … are classics. AMERICAN classics. And just as with a traditional navy blue suit, or a Frank Sinatra song, a classic will NEVER go out of style; a true classic is forever, and will always find a NEW audience which will find something new and fresh to appreciate. 

We invite all actors who have a love for these wonderful classics to audition for us. We invite students of American theatre to acquaint themselves with the masters and their oftentimes quite complex characters.  We invite college theatre departments to reconsider teaching these classics in their curriculum.  And we invite audiences of ALL ages, of all ethnicities and backgrounds to come visit us, stay with us … SHARE with us. Keep their voices and messages heard. They belong to US.

Karey Faulkner

Founder and