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Our Town
''Our Town'' is a three act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. The play is set in the fictional community of Grover's Corners, modeled after several New Hampshire towns in the Mount Monadnock region: Jaffrey, Peterborough, Dublin, and others. Using meta-theatrical devices, the play is set in a 1930's theater. Through the actions of the Stage Manager, the town of Grover's Corners is created for the audience and scenes from its history between the years of 1901 and 1913 play out. Wilder, in his 30s, lived in MacDowell Colony in Peterborough in June, 1937, one of many locations where Wilder worked on the play. The third act was drafted entirely in one day during a visit to Zurich in September 1937 after a long evening walk in the rain with a friend. The eventual product was banned in the Soviet Union in 1947, together with ''The Skin of Our Teeth'', for making family life "too attractive."
''Our Town'' is a story of character development that details the interactions between citizens of an everyday town in the early twentieth century through their everyday lives (particularly the lives of George Gibbs, a doctor's son, and Emily Webb, the daughter of a newspaper editor). ''Our Town'' was first performed at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey on 22 January 1938. It next opened at the Wilbur Theater in Boston, Massachusetts on 25 January 1938. Its New York City debut was on 4 February 1938 at Henry Miller's Theatre, and later moved to the Morosco Theatre. The play was produced and directed by Jed Harris.
Background
''Our Town'''s narrator, the Stage Manager, is completely self-aware of his relationship with the audience, leaving him free to break the fourth wall and address them. According to the script, it is to be performed with little scenery and no set and only three props. The reasons spring from Wilder's own dissatisfaction 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." The answer was to have the characters mime the objects with which they interact. Their surroundings are created only with chairs, tables, and ladders. (e.g. The scene in which Emily and George share homework answers through their windows is performed with the two actors standing atop separate ladders to represent elevated windows of neighboring houses.) Wilder says, "Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind—not in things, not in 'scenery.'"
Wilder's use of archetypes and stereotypes appeal to average families and make this play a "timeless classic." Beginning with the routine and tiny necessities of daily life, the audience is exposed to the intimate and habitual life of a real American family. The last two acts gradually represent deeper aspects of life using George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose unspoken mutual affection as children blossoms into love, marriage and death. Act 2 celebrates the wedding of George and Emily. The characters analyze the need for human companionship while questioning the institution of marriage. The last-minute apprehension Emily and George feel about their marriage represents a universal theme of young people wanting to grow up quickly while still craving childhood's relative certainty and security.
''Our Town's'' strong grasp on its audience lasts through the finale of the play, when the ghost of Emily Webb travels back in time to her 12th birthday. Through this, Wilder conveys the meaning and significance of the little things in life. The theme of daily life and routine is once again brought back into the play. The author's concept of pursuing life is also brought up with Mrs. Gibbs's desire to visit France. Later in the play she obtains the money necessary to go, but she instead leaves the money to George and his wife; implying that either she, like Emily, did not appreciate life to its fullest, or instead that she came to enjoy the simple pleasures enough that she didn't need France. The magnitude of small town America, with its slow-moving culture and relaxed atmosphere, is revealed. Because these life lessons are relevant even to today's fast-paced culture, the timelessness of ''Our Town'' is underscored.
''Our Town'' also attempts to encapsulate the New England town of the early twentieth century, with its ongoing industrialization and immigration, alluded to in the mentions of "Polish Town." The Stage Manager also stresses the famous line "This is the way we were."
Characters
;Main characters:
* Stage Manager
* Mrs. Myrtle Webb
* Mr. Charles Webb
* George Gibbs
* Emily Webb
* Mrs. Julia Gibbs
* Dr. Frank F. Gibbs
;Secondary characters
* Simon Stimson
* Joe Crowell
* Howie Newsome
* Rebecca Gibbs
* Wally Gibbs
* Professor Willard
* Woman in Auditorium
* Man in Auditorium
* Another Woman in Auditorium
* Si Crowell
* Mrs. Soames
* Constable Warren
* Three Baseball Players
* Joe Stoddard
* Sam Craig
* Dead Man
* Dead Woman
* Mr. Carter
* Farmer McCarthy
Plot
Throughout the play, the Stage Manager conducts the story being told, taking questions from the audience, describing the locations and making key observations about the world he or she creates for the audience. This "man of the hour" also plays several different but key roles within the story he or she tells, such as a preacher and the owner of a soda shop and an old woman.
Act I: Daily Life
The play begins with the Stage Manager providing a description of the town. After this are scenes within the Gibbs' and Webbs' homes of both families preparing their children for school. The Stage Manager then guides the audience through a day in the life of the town. He also has Professor Willard, a long-winded local historian, and Mr. Webb, editor of the ''Grover's Corners Sentinel'', talk about the town. After a scene within the Congregational Church, Mrs. Webb, Mrs. Gibbs, and Mrs. Soames discuss Simon Stimson. Stimson is the church organist with a reputation for being a drunkard. Due to his non-conforming nature, he is often the subject of the town's gossip. Although a relatively small role, Stimson is Wilder's voice for some of his darker views of humanity. The act also includes a scene in which George and Emily discuss school, and Emily's agreement to help George with his schoolwork foreshadows a future relationship. Also on the ladder, George's younger sister Rebecca, talks about the moon and how it might get nearer and near until there's a "big 'splosion", showing George's sister is a very curious girl. The subject of "daily life" addressed throughout this act stereotypes the average "American family."
Act II: Love and Marriage
Three years pass and George and Emily announce their plans to wed. The day is filled with stress, topped off by George's visit to the Webb family home. There, he meets Mr. Webb, who tells George of his own father's advice to him: to treat his wife like property and never to respect her needs. Mr. Webb continues to say that he did the exact opposite of his father's advice and has been happy since. Mr. Webb concludes by telling George to never take advice from anyone on matters of that nature. Here, the Stage Manager interrupts the scene and takes the audience back a year, to the end of Emily and George's junior year. Over an ice cream, Emily confronts George with his pride and they discuss the future and their love for each other. The wedding follows, where George, in a fit of nervousness, tells his mother that he is not ready to marry. Emily, too, tells her father of her anxiety about marriage. However, they both regain their composure and George proceeds down the aisle to be wed by the preacher (played by Stage Manager).
Act III: Death and Loss
It is in the end where tragedies begin to occur. Emily dies while giving birth to her second child, which, in her stead, survives. After Emily's funeral, the ghost of Emily learns it is possible to live over living days. She goes back to her 12th birthday, and realizes just how much life should be valued, minute for minute. She then returns to her grave.
Awards and nominations
;Awards
* 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
* 1989 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Revival
* 1989 Tony Award for Best Revival
Source: Wikipedia