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I am extremely proud of this ultra-talented cast of dedicated students, and I am over-joyed to have the opportunity to be Director of the first main stage production for Rockwall-Heath in the 2015-16 school year.

Our Town, even in its day, was an unusual theatrical presentation on many levels and it’s timeless nature carries on until today. The play still holds that curious line between reality and imagination, although seemingly simplistic on the surface, it requires the actors to explore the subtext underlying the surface line they speak and to project very raw emotions underneath. This takes a mature High School cast of actors to pull this off.

Play Background: The social climate of the time of the play (1901-1913) reflects an interesting bygone era, that when written by Thornton Wilder in 1938, was seen as an innocent and simple time that most of his audience could remember fondly as children, and had been lost to World War I, massive economic collapse, and the industrial revolution. The intention of the writer was to strip away the use of scenery and props to tell a simple story of ordinary life and to reveal the simple beauty and eternal nature of our short lives on earth, as a stark contrast to the decadence and social-political upheaval that America was going through at the time.

We see much of these same dynamics happening around us today as we transition into an exciting but scary new millennium. In this new ultra-fast and increasingly complex technological age, our world is now filled with new levels of horrific terrorism, internal political divisiveness and strife, regional wars, and economic insecurity. We all yearn for simpler times and tangible truthes, as we are constantly bombarded and marketed to that, "our lives would only better if..." Our Town allows us a chance to slow down, breathe again, relax, and bask in the simple beauty that is all around us. This generation of young people has never lived without the internet and some kind of high tech gadget to access it, and that alone has radically changed social and political mores. Yet with all of the 4K TV, gigabit ethernet, 3D Smartphones, HD graphical virtual reality that is inundating our entertainment, we have turned ironically to “reality-based” shows to see what is behind the curtain and experience the raw and transparent moments and emotions we all feel and can relate to.

This longing for the more tangible, simpler, and more relaxed moments in life, now seem to race by us in the constant busyness of all of our doing. Yet, the sound of rain on an early morning, the change of the seasons, real hot maple syrup on French toast, coffee with your spouse, helping a fellow townsman when they were in need, the awe of a full moon, falling in love over an ice cream soda, honesty, and positive outlooks. On earth, we are born, grow-up, get married, work our chosen professions, grow old and die in what seems like a blink of an eye. And yet as we try to contemplate the meaning of our lives, we often have very little true understanding of what lies beyond this earthly realm, each with one’s own belief or opinion; so we wait. We wait for the coming of something more than this limited existence of the five senses offers, and aas we pass on, our lives all become the multi-colored pieces of a larger work of art that at once seems chaotic, yet strangely perfectly engineered.

Enjoy the show!

Steven Wikoff

Director