About
the Play:
Our Town was one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top
100 plays of the 20th century.
Our Town is a full-length drama by Thornton Wilder.
The Stage Manager guides audiences through the timeless drama of life in a small New England town, as its inhabitants grow up, get married and
discover the beauty of life. Thornton Wilder's
masterpiece, Our Town has become an American classic with universal appeal.
Our Town reveals the ordinary lives of two next-door
families as they live among a host of others in the fictitious small
town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, at the turn of the 20th
century. The play is performed on a bare stage and narrated by a
Stage Manager, who speaks directly to the audience and introduces
characters and actors and sets the scenes. The action focuses on the
mundanities of every day life in the three acts: "Daily Life,"
"Love and Marriage" and "Death." Described by
Edward Albee as "…the greatest American play ever
written," it follows the Webb and Gibbs families as their
children fall in love, marry, and eventually – in one of the most
famous scenes in American theatre – die. Defying most conventional
theatrical genres, it is neither a comedy nor a tragedy, neither a
romance nor a farce. Thornton Wilder's fundamental message in
Our Town is that people should appreciate exchanges of
everyday life while they live them. This edition differs only
slightly from previous acting editions, yet it presents Our Town
as Thornton Wilder wished his most renowned and most
frequently performed play to be performed.
Our Town premiered in 1938 at McCarter Theatre in
Princeton, New Jersey. It transferred to Broadway at Henry Miller's
Theatre to wide acclaim, and won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This single-set
American classic is perennially one of the most popular selections
for high school, college, and community theatre productions.
Cast: 7 female, 17 male and extras.
What people say:
"While all of Thornton
Wilder's work is intelligent, non-synthetic and often
moving, as well as funny, it is Our Town that
makes the difference. It is probably the finest play ever written by
an American." — Edward Albee
"Thornton Wilder's
masterpiece...An immortal tale of small town morality [and]...a
classic of soft spoken theater." — The New York
Times
"Beautiful and remarkable one
of the sagest, warmest and most deeply human scripts to have come out
of our theatre…. A spiritual experience." — New
York Post
"No American play describes
more powerfully how we imagine ourselves…." — New
York Daily News
"No play ever moved me so
deeply." — The New Yorker
About the Playwright:
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an acclaimed American
novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between
the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue
to be read and produced around the world. He also enjoyed enormous
success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among
them teaching, acting, the opera, and cinema. A three time Pulitzer
Prize winner and the only winner for both fiction and drama, his many
honours include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy
of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the
National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.