Richard Miller (Clark Green ) and Muriel McComber (Lilijana DeJesus) share a moonlit first kiss in The Acting Company’s production of “Ah, Wilderness!”

YUBA CITY, CA, (MPG) - This summer I spent far too much time in the theater. While other families took trips to the beach, I found myself painting one onstage.

That painted shoreline became the foundation for my concept for Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!”, a play that feels especially fitting as America celebrates its 250th birthday. Set over the Fourth of July holiday in 1906, the comedy captures a young man’s coming-of-age against the backdrop of family, patriotism, rebellion, romance and the great American pastime of arguing at the dinner table.

But “Ah, Wilderness!” is more than a nostalgic holiday comedy. It is one of America’s defining theatrical works, written by one of America’s most important playwrights. O’Neill was the first American dramatist to gain international fame and remains the only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work helped shape the American stage, not only through realism, but through bold experimentation. 

That experimental spirit has been central to my approach.

Members of the Miller household gather around Richard Miller after his drunken return home in The Acting Company’s “Ah, Wilderness!” The scene contrasts the warmth of O’Neill’s imagined family with the darker realities that shaped the playwright’s own life.

Although “Ah, Wilderness!” may appear to be O’Neill’s most traditional play, his larger body of work tells a different story. Throughout his career, O’Neill explored expressionism, symbolism, masks, inner monologues, sound, movement and psychological landscapes. He was not interested in theatre as a museum piece. He was interested in what theatre could reveal.

My own introduction to O’Neill came through his early one-act Thirst, which I chose years ago as my final project for both voice and movement and stage design while studying theatre at Sacramento State. That play, centered on survivors stranded at sea, opened my imagination to the way O’Neill’s work could be physical, symbolic and visually daring. It also introduced me to the powerful role the sea played in his writing. That influence appears throughout this production.

Our stage begins as a white box — a blank page. Rather than recreating a literal 1906 home, the space represents O’Neill’s imagination. “Ah, Wilderness!” has often been described as a kind of “wishing out loud,” a dream of the warm, stable family life O’Neill never truly had. His real life was marked by addiction, loss and instability, making the play’s tenderness all the more meaningful.

Richard Miller is drawn into Belle’s world during a barroom scene in The Acting Company’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!” The production uses shadows, white fabric and a stark black house frame to suggest the play unfolding inside O’Neill’s imagined version of home.

The black frame of the house becomes the ink sketch of that dream: an image of home, but also a reminder of the shadows behind it. The sand-colored floor and dunes honor both O’Neill’s lifelong connection to the sea and our own history with this production, which was first attempted in 2020 before being canceled just one week before opening due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the center of the stage is a boat. It becomes a table, a bar, a gathering place and finally a vessel. For Richard Miller, the young dreamer at the heart of the play, that boat represents the voyage from boyhood toward adulthood.

Even the transitions are part of the storytelling. Drawing from my background in improv and devised theatre, I wanted every moment to feel alive. Music, movement, humor and surprise all become part of Richard’s dreamscape. Our production even takes the liberty of imagining one very American dinner scene in British accents, inspired by Richard’s wish that America “still belonged to England.”

Musical director Isaac Mahurin adds another layer through jazz-inspired accompaniment. Though jazz had not fully emerged in 1906, it has become one of America’s greatest cultural exports — a sound shaped by freedom, joy, democracy and a blending of cultures. In that sense, it feels right at home in an American classic.

Richard Miller’s wish that America still belonged to England becomes a comic dream sequence in The Acting Company’s “Ah, Wilderness!” The production reimagines a classic Fourth of July dinner scene through British accents and patriotic absurdity.

As our country marks 250 years, “Ah, Wilderness!” gives us a chance to look at the American family, the American dream and the American stage through fresh eyes. This production is not meant to change O’Neill’s play, but to honor it by engaging with the same creative spirit that defined him.

The white box is his blank page.
The house is his dream of home.
The sand is memory.
The boat is the journey.
And the family at the center of it all is the wish.

Hopefully, the experiment works.

But then again, O’Neill was never afraid of an experiment.

The Acting Company’s production of “Ah, Wilderness!” opens July 17 and runs through Aug. 9, with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at actingcompany.org.