Playwright Rosary Hartel O’Neill Reflects on Paris

Breaking Character: Rosary Hartel O’Neill is a regaled playwright and scholar who is currently juggling several different plays being performed in venues across the globe. One of her most promising works, Degas in New Orleans, focuses on the real-life experiences of the renowned French painter Edgar Degas who travelled to New Orleans in the years after the Civil War in attempts to help his finically struggling American family. Rosary, who was raised in New Orleans and is bilingual, hopes that the play will be performed in both English and French. In September of 2016, she traveled to Paris where she discussed the future possibilities for the work and her newest play, Beckett at Greystones Bay, which follows a period in the life of famed writer Samuel Beckett. Below, writer Meagan Meehan chats with Rosary about these experiences.