The Game

Louise Bryant had been encouraged all during the spring of 1916 by George Cram Cook to contribute to the coming summer of plays in Provincetown just as he’d been inspiring her lover John Reed to participate in this communal venture. She wasn’t the most beloved person in Provincetown, as many were protective of Reed and could see her flirtations with O’Neill, with whom she was having an affair. Some may have been uncomfortable with her good looks and the confidence with which she evidently carried herself. She may also have put off others if she ever hinted at the anti-Semitic feelings she expressed in her letters to Reed while he was away; she never got along with Ida Rauh, who was Jewish. Vorse remarked that Bryant “thinks the revolution is so everyone can have a fur coat,” and Emma Goldman once commented that she wasn’t really a Communist, she just slept with one. When Bryant’s play The Game was chosen to be produced on the second bill, Stella Ballantine, Teddy’s wife and Goldman’s niece, complained to Mary Heaton Vorse: “just because she’s sleeping with Jack Reed is no reason we should do her play.”