About the Play:

Wilder's Classic One-Acts is a collection of one-act plays by Thornton Wilder. In this collection of his most famous one-act plays, Thornton Wilder experiments with techniques and dramatic forms he would later develop in his celebrated full-length works. The Long Christmas Dinner and The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden are especially recommended for school and contest use.

The plays in this collection offer a first glimpse of Wilder's folksy Stage Manager figure; his usage of pantomime, minimal scenery and farce; and his signature connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of the human experience. The contents of Wilder's Classic One-Acts include:

The Long Christmas Dinner: A masterpiece in its own way, it traces the lives of 12 members of a wealthy American family in a stylized setting of Christmas dinner over 90 years. Wilder breaks the boundaries of time as we measure it, and invites us to partake of "one long, happy Christmas dinner" – past, present and future. As generations of the smalltown Bayard family appear, have children, wither, and depart, only the audience appreciates what changes and what remains the same. "Every last twig is wrapped around with ice. You almost never see that," young Genevieve marvels, not realizing that her mother made this observation years earlier, or that her daughter-in-law will one day do the same. Particularly suitable for schools and play contests. (1931; Cast: 7 female, 5 male)

The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden: A father, mother and two of their three children drive from Newark, New Jersey to Camden to visit their eldest daughter. Their journey is punctuated by talk, laughter, memories (some mundane, some happy, some painful) and arguments between the kids are interspersed with acknowledgments of mortality. In this family drama, nothing much happens, yet everything important happens. "Someday we'll all be holding up traffic," the mother observes as a funeral passes. Only in the final moments do we learn the daughter is recovering from delivering a stillborn child and almost died herself. Particularly suitable for schools and play contests. (1931; Cast: 3 female, 3 male)

Pullman Car Hiawatha: This one-act comedy, set in a Pullman car on a train travelling from New York to Chicago in December, 1930, introduces techniques Wilder would use in future three-act plays: The stage is virtually bare, with only a balcony or bridge and two flights of stairs, and the play is narrated by a Stage Manager. One of the characters speaks words that foreshadow the lovely adieu bid by Emily in Our Town. The play includes a character representing Grover's Corners, Ohio – a forerunner of Our Town's Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. The cast includes characters representing the hours of the day, the weather, the planets and supernatural beings. Conventional time is suspended, and the only true measures of existence are life and death. Pullman Car takes a metaphorical journey by train through the American landscape, as a diverse band of travellers encapsulated in a Pullman car hurtles through time, space and a range of emotions. (1932; Cast: 5 female, 12 male)

Queens of France is a comedy about a creative lawyer who attempts to make money on the side by convincing his clients they have a secret identity. In New Orleans in 1869, M'su Cahusac, a charlatan of a lawyer, preys on vulnerable women, convincing each one that she is a legitimate descendant of the long-lost Dauphin, who fled Paris for New Orleans at the age of 10 during the French Revolution. Therefore, he tells each victim she is the rightful Queen of France. Tantalized by visions of wealth, palaces and power, each victim responds in her own fashion to this preposterous revelation, which the lawyer claims is supported by the Historical Society of Paris. (1932; Cast: 3 female, 1 male, plus 2 female or male)

Such Things Only Happen in Books: In this one-act play, originally entitled A Matter of Conscience, a lordly novelist, his wife, their doctor, their maid, her brother and a visiting stranger are caught up in various deceptions, illusions and mysteries – including a murder mystery in a haunted house. Novelist John's two pleasures in life are losing at solitaire and lecturing his wife about how there are no plots in life. Of course, his wife is cheating on him with the family doctor, who reveals not only their infidelity but a whole network of jailbreaks, murders, mutilations and buried treasure, all of which have taken place in John's house. (1931; Cast: 1 female, 3 male)

Love and How to Cure It: This melodramatic comedy is set in SoHo, London, on the stage of the Tivoli Palace of Music in April of 1895. A young man is hopelessly in love with a teenage music hall dancer who can't stand him, thinks he is stalking her (which he is), and fears that he is going to shoot her (which he isn't). Because she rejects him, he decides to kill himself. The girl's aunt, an actress and singer, and their friend, an over-the-hill comedian still mourning the death of his wife, try to intervene to "cure" him, and at the same time, teach the thwarted lover what true love really means. This is one of Wilder's many treatments of unrequited love. (1931; Cast: 2 female, 2 male)

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.