Our Town

Our Town
1938 first edition cover from the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division
Written by	Thornton Wilder
Characters	Stage Manager Mrs. Myrtle Webb Mr. Charles Webb Emily Webb Joe Crowell Jr. Mrs. Julia Gibbs Dr. Frank F. Gibbs Simon Stimson Mrs. Soames George Gibbs Howie Newsome Rebecca Gibbs Wally Webb Professor Willard Woman in the Balcony Man in the Auditorium Lady in the Box Mrs. Louella Soames Constable Warren Si Crowell Three Baseball Players Sam Craig Joe Stoddard
Date premiered	January 22, 1938
Place premiered	McCarter Theatre Princeton, New Jersey
Original language	English
Subject	Life and death in an American small town
Genre	Drama
Setting	1901 to 1913. Grover's Corners, New Hampshire near Massachusetts.

Our Town is a 1938 three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It tells the story of the fictional American small town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its citizens.

Throughout Wilder uses metatheatrical devices setting the play in the actual theatre where it is being performed. The main character is the stage manager of the theatre who directly addresses the audience, brings in guests lecturers, fields questions from the audience, and fills in playing some of the roles. The play is performed without a set on a mostly-bare stage. With a few exceptions, the actors mime actions without the use of props.

Our Town was first performed at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey in 1938.^[1] It later went on to success on Broadway and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It remains popular today and revivals are frequent.

Synopsis

Act I: Daily Life

The Stage Manager introduces the audience to the small town of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and the people living there as a morning begins in the year 1901. Professor Willard speaks to the audience about the history of the town. Joe Crowell delivers the paper to Doc Gibbs, Howie Newsome delivers the milk, and the Webb and Gibbs households send their children (Emily and George, respectively) off to school on this beautifully simple morning.

Act II: Love and Marriage

Three years have passed, and George and Emily prepare to wed. The day is filled with stress. Howie Newsome is delivering milk in the pouring rain while Si Crowell, younger brother of Joe, laments how George's baseball talents will be squandered. George pays an awkward visit to his soon-to-be in-laws. Here, the Stage Manager interrupts the scene and takes the audience back a year, to the end of Emily and George's junior year. Emily confronts George about his pride, and over an ice cream soda, they discuss the future and their love for each other. George resolves not to go to college, as he had planned, but to work and eventually take over his uncle's farm. In the present, George and Emily say that they are not ready to marry - George to his mother, Emily to her father - but they both calm down and happily go through with the wedding. Both George and Emily are 17 when they marry.

Act III: Death and Dying

Nine years have passed. The Stage Manager opens the act with a lengthy monologue emphasizing eternity, bringing the audience's attention to the cemetery outside of town and the characters who have died since the wedding, including Mrs. Gibbs (pneumonia, while traveling), Wally Webb (burst appendix, while camping), Mrs. Soames, and Simon Stimson (suicide by hanging). Town undertaker Joe Stoddard is introduced, as is a young man named Sam Craig who has returned to Grover's Corners for his cousin's funeral. That cousin is Emily, who died giving birth to her and George's second child. Once the funeral ends, Emily emerges to join the dead; Mrs. Gibbs urges her to forget her life, but she refuses. Ignoring the warnings of Simon, Mrs. Soames, and Mrs. Gibbs, Emily returns to Earth to relive one day, her 12th birthday. The memory proves too painful for her, and she realizes that every moment of life should be treasured. When she asks the Stage Manager if anyone truly understands the value of life while they live it, he responds, "No. The saints and poets, maybe - they do some." Emily returns to her grave next to Mrs. Gibbs and watches impassively as George kneels weeping over her. The Stage Manager concludes the play and wishes the audience a good night.

Characters

• Stage Manager – a narrator, commentator, and guide through Grover's Corners. He joins in the action of the play periodically, as the minister at the wedding, the soda shop owner, a local townsmen, etc., and speaks directly to Emily after her death.
• Emily Webb – one of the main characters; we follow her from a precocious young girl through her wedding to George Gibbs and her early death.
• George Gibbs – the other main character; the boy next door, a kind but irresponsible teenager who matures over time and becomes a responsible husband, father and farmer.
• Frank Gibbs – George's father, the town doctor
• Julia (Hersey) Gibbs – George's mother. She dreams of going to Paris, but doesn't get there. She saved $350 for the trip from the sale of an antique furniture piece, but ultimately willed it to George and Emily. Dies while visiting her daughter in Ohio.
• Charles Webb – Emily's father, editor of the Grover's Corners Sentinel
• Myrtle Webb – Emily's mother

Secondary characters

• Joe and Si Crowell – local paperboys. Joe's intelligence earns him a full scholarship to MIT where he graduates at the top of his class. His promise will be cut short on the fields of France during World War I, according to the Stage Manager. Both he and his brother Si hold marriage in high disdain.
• Simon Stimson – the choir director and church organist. We never learn the specific cause of his alcoholism and suicide, although Dr. Gibbs observes that "He's seen a pick of troubles." He remains bitter and cynical even beyond the grave.
• Howie Newsome – the milkman, a fixture of Grover's Corners.
• Rebecca Gibbs – George's younger sister. Later elopes with a traveling salesman and settles in Ohio.
• Wally Webb – Emily's younger brother. Dies of a burst appendix on a Boy Scout camping trip.
• Professor Willard – a rather long-winded lecturer
• Woman in Auditorium – concerned with temperance
• Man in Auditorium – concerned with social justice
• Another Woman in Auditorium – concerned with culture and beauty
• Mrs. Louella Soames – a gossipy townswoman and member of the choir
• Constable Bill Warren – the policeman
• Two Baseball Players – who mock George at the wedding
• Joe Stoddard – the undertaker
• Sam Craig – a nephew of Mrs Gibbs who left town to seek his fortune. He came back after 12 years in Buffalo for Emily's funeral.
• Dead Man
• Dead Woman
• Mr. Carter
• Farmer McCarty
• Bessie – Howie Newsome's horse (visible to the characters, but not the audience)

Composition

Wilder wrote the play while in his 30s. In June 1937, he lived in the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, one of the many locations where he worked on the play. During a visit to Zürich in September 1937, it is believed he drafted the entire third act in one day after a long evening walk in the rain with a friend, author Samuel Morris Steward.^[2]

Setting

The play is set in the actual theatre where the play is being performed, but the year is always 1938. The stage manager of the 1933 production introduces the play-within-the-play which is set in the fictional community of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. The Stage Manager gives the coordinates of Grover's Corners as 42°40′ north latitude and 70°37′ west longitude (those coordinates are actually in Massachusetts, about a thousand feet off the coast of Rockport).

Style

Wilder was dissatisfied with the theatre of his time: "I felt that something had gone wrong....I began to feel that the theatre was not only inadequate, it was evasive."^[3] His response was to use a metatheatrical style. Our Town's narrator, the Stage Manager, is completely aware of his relationship with the audience, leaving him free to break the fourth wall and address them directly. According to the script, the play is to be performed with little scenery, no set and minimal props. The characters mime the objects with which they interact. Their surroundings are created only with chairs, tables, staircases, and ladders. For example, the scene in which Emily helps George with his evening homework, conversing through upstairs windows, is performed with the two actors standing atop separate ladders to represent their neighboring houses. Wilder once said: "Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind – not in things, not in 'scenery.' "^[4]

Wilder called Our Town his favorite out of all his works, but complained that it was rarely done right, insisting that it "should be performed without sentimentality or ponderousness--simply, dryly, and sincerely."

Production history

Our Town was first performed at McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey on January 22, 1938. It next opened at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts on January 25, 1938. Its New York City debut was on February 4, 1938 at Henry Miller's Theatre, and later moved to the Morosco Theatre; this production was produced and directed by Jed Harris.^[5] Wilder received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938 for the work.^[6]

In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave."^[7]

Awards

• 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
• 1989 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival
• 1989 Tony Award for Best Revival

Adaptations

Hal Holbrook as the Stage Manager in the 1977 television adaptation.

The play has been adapted numerous times:

• Our Town was first performed on radio May 12, 1939, on The Campbell Playhouse. The cast included Orson Welles as the Stage Manager, John Craven of the original stage production as George Gibbs, and Patricia Newton as Emily Webb.
• Our Town (1940 film), adaptation starring Martha Scott as Emily and William Holden as George Gibbs, with an original music score composed by Aaron Copland. Many members of the original cast repeated their roles in this film, although the ending was changed so that Emily lived.
• Our Town (1940 radio), on May 6, 1940, a radio version was performed by many of the same film actors for Lux Radio Theater.
• Our Town (television), a live musical 1955 television adaptation on Producers' Showcase starring Frank Sinatra as the Stage Manager, Paul Newman as George Gibbs, and Eva Marie Saint as Emily. The first and only musical version of the play to be telecast (so far).
• Our Town,^[8] a 1977 television adaptation of the play, starring Hal Holbrook as the Stage Manager, Robby Benson as George Gibbs and Glynnis O'Connor as Emily Webb.
• Grover's Corners, a 1987 musical adaptation performed at the Marriott Theatre.
• Our Town,^[9] a 1989 telecast of a Lincoln Center stage production starring Spalding Gray, Frances Conroy, Penelope Ann Miller, and Eric Stoltz
• OT: Our Town, a 2002 documentary by Scott Hamilton Kennedy about a production of the play by Dominguez High School in Compton, California
• Our Town (2003 film), a television adaptation of a 2002 Broadway revival starring Paul Newman, this time as the Stage Manager
• Our Town (opera), an operatic version of the play with music by Ned Rorem
• An award-winning revival of Our Town opened at the Barrow Street Theatre, in New York City, on February 26, 2009. The production was directed by David Cromer, who also performed the role of Stage Manager for much of the show's run. Upon closing, the production had played four preview and 644 regular performances, making it the longest-running production of the play in its history. In addition to Cromer, other notable actors who performed in the role of Stage Manager included Helen Hunt, Michael McKean, Jason Butler Harner, Stephen Kunken and Michael Shannon.^[10]
• In 1994, Philip Jerry choreographed a balletic adaptation set to the music of Aaron Copland and has been performed by the American Repertory Ballet in Princeton, New Jersey in the decades since its premiere.^[11]

References

1. "Our Town: A History". pbs.org. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
2. Steward, Samuel; Gertrude Stein; Alice B. Toklas (1977). Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas. Houghton Mifflin. p. 32. ISBN 0-395-25340-3.
3. Wilder, Thornton. Thornton Wilder, Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. Preface.
4. Lumley, Frederick (1967). New Trends in 20th Century Drama: A Survey since Ibsen and Shaw. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 333. OCLC 330001.
5. "Our Town". Internet Broadway Database. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
6. The Pulitzer Board (1938). "Pulitzer Prize Winners of 1938". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2008-07-10.
7. "Play 'Our Town' is Banned in Soviet Berlin Sector", Christian Science Monitor, Feb 13, 1946, p. 13.
8. (tsalagicelt) (30 May 1977). "Our Town (TV Movie 1977)". IMDb.
9. W. Jones. ""Great Performances" Our Town (TV Episode 1989)". IMDb.
10. "Our Town". Playbill.com. Retrieved 2010-12-12.
11. "Our Town". americanrepertoryballet.org.

Further reading

• Wilder, Thornton (1938). Our Town: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Coward McCann, Inc. pp. 128 pp. OCLC 773139.

External links

• Our Town at the Internet Broadway Database
• Our Town Teaching and Reading Educational Materials; by The Thornton Wilder Society
• Dramatic and Theatrical Aspects in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”
• Cummings Study Guide of Our Town
• Our Town 1940 film; free download at archive.org
• Two authorized productions on DVD
• Our Town Plot Summary and Critical Analysis; by The Thornton Wilder Society
• Documentary Video on the legacy of Our Town; by The Thornton Wilder Society