"Our Town"
By Thornton Wilder
Directed by Thom Hofrichter
Reflections on OUR TOWN
Twentieth Century American Drama (1982) by C.W.E. Bigsby
Our Town is simply one of the most effective and affecting American plays. Deceptively simple in construction, it is unashamed in its emotional directness but reaches for a universal which will neutralize its own sentimentalities.
Wilder On Wilder (1979) by Tbornton Wilder
Our Town is not offered as a picture of life in a New Hampshire village; or as speculation about conditions of life after death (that element I merely took from Dante's Purgatory). It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events of our daily life. I have made the claim as preposterous as possible, for I have set the village against the largest dimensions of time and place.
The recurrent words in the play (few have noticed it) are "hundreds," "thousands," and "millions." Emily's joys and griefs, her algebra lessons and her birthday present--what are they when we consider all the billions of girls who have lived, who are living, and who will live? Each individual's assertion to be an absolute reality can only be inner, very inner. And here the method of the staging finds its justification -- in the first two acts there are at least a few chairs and tables; but when Emily revisits the earth and the kitchen to which she descended on her twelfth birthday, the very chairs and tables are gone. Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind--not things, not in the "scenery."...The climax of this play needs only five square feet of boarding and the passion to know what life means to us.
Wilder: Our Town (1949) by John Mason Brown
If he [Wilder] did away with scenery and relied on a stage manager to set his stage, it was because the human heart was his real scene. It was the heart of the community which he laid bare.
God On Broadway by Jerome Ellison
Wilder himself, in explaining his writing observed that "the great religious teachers have constantly had recourse to the parable as a means of imparting their deepest institutions." His own life and work offer much evidence, internal and external, that he regarded himself as a special kind of religious teacher.
On Wilder's stage, God is seldom mentioned and never directly addressed; he is the transcendental God of Emerson, not the immanent, life-changing God of St. Francis. The playgoer is made aware of eternity, of infinity, and of terrestrial creation of inexpressible beauty and value. Then, in Our Town -- where our ultimate address is given as "The Mind of God" -- a Supreme Being is acknowledged as Creator of all.
Thornton Wilder (1978) by Rex Burbank
The vision Wilder offers of the human condition in Our Town is essentially tragic. It is a picture of the priceless value of even the most common and routine events in life and of the tragic waste of life through failure to realize the value of every moment. Unaware of the value of life, the people of Grover's Corners live their lives banally and seldom get beneath or above the surface of life. Yet even what they do realize and experience is beyond price; and this is the paradox that pervades the play and is the source of its tension. By relating the ordinary events in the lives of these ordinary people to a metaphysical framework that broadens with each act, Wilder is able to portray life as being at once significant and trivial, noble and absurd, miraculous and humdrum.
Thus, while the realistic writer, by implication, tends to confine himself to the literal recording of human nature, the less insular and more imaginative writer--the producer of masterpieces--uses human nature as his materials but goes beyond its surface appearance to the realm of human mind or of eternal ideas.
[Wilder's view of theater was that] at its best the stage play was a kind of religious ceremony in which the audience contemplated the ritual demonstration of the human condition and of the relationship of the individual to nature, to humanity, and to the cosmos. [Wilder] expressed regret that the great religious experience felt by Greek audiences is missing from the theater of today. The theater, he said "has lost one of its most powerful effects--the shudder and awe induced by the presence of the numinous by the tremendum of religious experience..." The present age is not one in which a religious shudder and awe is likely to be felt as the Greek audiences felt it, but Our Town [...] attempts to recover for modern audiences the feeling that there is a meaningful relationship between the individual and nature and mankind and the universe, and to restore to life those elements of mystery and love that are the basis for the affirmation of a higher presence.
Why a congregational production?
With an exception or two, the cast and crew of Our Town comes entirely from the congregation of First Presbyterian Church. This is an unusual occurrence, usually about 50% to 75% of the participants in our five-show theater series comes from the community at large. So, why did I deviate from the normal patterns here at FPT?
As the new Minister of Drama, it is important that I am part of the community here at First Presbyterian Church. What better way to get to know 30-40 of the members than to do a show with them? And, particularly this show. Our Town's message is grounded in the search to connect those who are closest to us. I am richer for the experience of Our Town, and gratified that show has brought me closer to the congregation where I practice my faith.
ABOUT THE PLAY
Our Town has come to be known as an American Classic. It has been the most widely performed play in the United States during the Twentieth Century. The deceptively simple play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938, documents the lives of two families in the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire from 1903 to 1911. Wilder breaks his play into three acts, which he titles: Daily Life, Love and Marriage, and Death. In the first act we are introduced to the town, and specifically two families, the Webb's and the Gibbs'. In the second act we witness the union of the two families through the marriage of their oldest children, Emily Webb and George Gibbs. Act Three takes place in the cemetery, where Emily is brought after she dies in the act of childbirth. Weaving the story together is the character of the Stage Manager, an enigmatic fellow who knows the past and the future, is able to step into the action if he sees fit, and comments on the things we witness in Grover's Corners.
By telling the simple stories of the lives of these common everyday folk, Wilder creates a play of enormous scope that reveals our strengths and shortcomings as a species. He shows us our blindness, our pettiness, our inability to make meaningful connections with one another; while at the same time he celebrates the human spirit in a way that transcends mere sentimentality. Perhaps, the character of Mrs. Seams says it best in the third act. "My, wasn't life awful -- (with a sigh) and wonderful." We hope you will join us for this celebration of our lives.
---Thom Hofrichter, Minister of Drama
Hometown heroics at First Presbyterian
Click to subscribe to greenroom
Sign My Guestbook
View My Guestbook
