Eugene O'Neill Award

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The Eugene O'Neill Award (also known as The Eugene O'Neill Scholarship Award or The Eugene O'Neill Acting Award), is one of Sweden's finest acting awards for actors of the stage. It was established by the American playwright Eugene O'Neill and first handed out in 1956.

Just before Eugene O'Neill died in 1953 he drew up a will where he gave the then not yet staged play Long Day's Journey Into Night (written in 1941) to the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Sweden's national stage, along with exlusive first performance rights. The gesture was as thanks for Dramaten's continued existence in staging his plays (more so than any other theatre in the world) and for the Swedes appreciation of his work; long before he became recognized internationally and even in his home country (O'Neill was also the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936). Later on his widow Carlotta O'Neill also gave Dramaten the performing rights to A Touch of the Poet (written in 1942), Hughie and More Stately Mansions. She also refrained from any staging fees of his plays in Sweden, provided that 8% of the roylaties from the revenues of each performance where given to the Eugene O'Neill Memory Fund (that manages the money for the scholarship award).

The award is to be handed out yearly and will, according to O'Neill's own wishes, be given to "highly deserving actors of Dramaten". Recipients of the award are to be decided by Dramaten's board of directors.

The prize money currently consists of 30.000 Swedish Crowns (appr. 4000. USD).

As an extra honor to Eugene O'Neill, the first award was granted the two actors who'd played the leading parts of William and Mary Tyrone in the original staging of Long Day's Journey Into Night at Dramaten in February 1956; Lars Hanson and Inga Tidblad - already in this time legendary thespians of the Swedish stage since the early 1920s and most definitely "highly deserving actors".

And throughout the years it's continued to be given to Sweden's very finest actors of the theatre.