I realize you are viewing the play through contemporary eyes and that the gap between today and the time period of Our Town is well over 100 years. And though the Stage Manager attempts to bridge that divide, she will make no attempt to convince you that Grover’s Corners is a role model of small-town living; she just tells you how it used to be. As the Stage Manager warns us: “Some of the things they’re going to say maybe’ll hurt your feelings – but that’s the way it is.”
Our Town is made up solely of shared relationships. Families/friends/neighbors/citizens: this community believes in the goodness of work, usefulness, and commitment, in protecting each other while respecting each other’s privacy, in forgiving and defending, in the freedom to worship, or not, without judgement. They are proud to be a part of the United States of America.
Thornton Wilder felt neither scenery nor props should ever distract from what is occurring between people, so there is nothing in the visual aspect of the play other than a few simple things to help these relationships and values exist. He wishes the audience to enter the play through their own empathies and abilities to imagine. I agree. I like that the theater is completely exposed because the actors have no place to hide.
The Stage Manager talks about the Eternal in all human beings, and she doesn’t mean heaven. She means the essence we eventually become after we die - which is determined by the spirit we are when alive. She means Love. This production is interested in those essences – the spirit in which lives are lived and relationships shared.
-Dr. Michael Penna
Director
