Course Reader: Mandy's Thoughts on "Our Town"
Since Thornton Wilder's Our Town is required reading for this year's cast of Let It Snow!, I thought I'd pre-pepper the discussion with my thoughts on why I chose to have people read it, and what I took away from it, reading it this time around.
There are things about the structure of the play that I *don't* want people to take away: the glimpse we get of the town doesn't delve all that deeply into any one person's experience; we get surface impressions, but the show is not from anyone's point of view, except maybe the narrator's (or the dead people).
But the fact that there *is* so much detail about the town and the surroundings is one of the reasons I thought of the play. Though the convention of the play is such that the stage is bare-bones (hey! just like OUR stage!), the language and actions of the characters fill up the world with color. They talk about landmarks such as the main street and the river, the hardware store and the doctor's house, schools and churches and the big butternut tree. The town has a newspaper and a police force. Off in the distance you can hear the train.
There are even characters in the play who are "audience members," asking questions about the town. (hey! just like we'll ask the audience member about the town!) Though Wilder may have meant them satirically, they ask pretty good questions for our purposes, about town activities and character: is there drinking? Do people care about social equality? What do they do for culture?
In thinking about a play that features a town as a main character, one of the temptations is for something to *threaten* the town, and for the town to be saved. But real towns don't quite work that way: in Our Town there are some minor changes afoot: they're building a new bank downtown and putting in a time capsule, horses are being replaced by "auto-mo-biles," some people leave and some people die -- but the town remains, in character, the same -- like a river it flows around obstacles and just absorbs them, until they become part of the town too.
But things *do* change on a SMALL scale -- small as compared to the town, but still large for those who are involved. George and Emily get married, which affects not only them, but their families. Big events happen, which may be the kinds which happen to everyone, but strike home for people nonetheless: the characters take time out to MUSE about events big and small: the full moon, marriage, youth, death, the weather. Everything that happens to you is important, if it's happening to YOU. It's important in the noticing. Emily says near the end, "We don't have time to look at one another" -- when we see characters *looking,* we see what's important to them in that moment, even if it's "just" the full moon or the coming rain.
Aside from all this big stuff about Life and Death, there's also useful practical character information to be gleaned. The characters live their everyday lives full of nuance: they gossip about people who live in town and who've left. They grouse at each other about hurrying up for breakfast. They chat while they're doing something useful like stringing the beans. They have pet hobbies and interests that are only mentioned in passing, but to them are whole lives: the chicken incubator, research about the Civil War and about Napoleon. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Gossip, gossip, gossip. It's the details that make stories specific instead of universal; aren't there endless stories about people growing up, getting married, and dying? It's all in the details.
And even more practical and technical than talking about details are the conventions of movement onstage. Thinking about how to make the stage seem bigger than it is. Characters bump into and talk to invisible townspeople extras. One young boy comes in from somewhere, throwing a ball up so high that sometimes he has to take six steps backwards to catch it. Theatrical convention is thrust to the forefront, with no scenery to speak of: climb a ladder and you're upstairs -- look over the top of the ladder and you're looking out the window. Lots of the action in the play is space-objects: stringing beans, washing dishes, even the doctor has a space-object bag. And the actors clean up their "props" before they leave the stage.
In short, I guess it's the abstract setting, but the total commitment to the characters' concrete reality that's a takeaway, plus the affection for the town, and the cataclysmic feelings that arise from the everyday. We're shooting for all of the nostalgia with none of the depressing. ;o) The real-town feel withOUT Wilder's abstraction FROM it (see Act 3).
Here's a clip from the drugstore scene between Emily and George -- from a Lincoln Center production starring Penelope Ann Miller as Emily, Spalding Grey as the narrator, and baby Eric Stoltz! as George:
Link to the Drugstore scene on YouTube -- no embedding for me!
And here's the part where George tries to go see Emily on their wedding day, and ends up stuck in the kitchen with her dad instead. (this is from some adorable college production, so the video is lo-fi -- BUT, you get the sense of the family being all irreverent with each other):
There are things about the structure of the play that I *don't* want people to take away: the glimpse we get of the town doesn't delve all that deeply into any one person's experience; we get surface impressions, but the show is not from anyone's point of view, except maybe the narrator's (or the dead people).
But the fact that there *is* so much detail about the town and the surroundings is one of the reasons I thought of the play. Though the convention of the play is such that the stage is bare-bones (hey! just like OUR stage!), the language and actions of the characters fill up the world with color. They talk about landmarks such as the main street and the river, the hardware store and the doctor's house, schools and churches and the big butternut tree. The town has a newspaper and a police force. Off in the distance you can hear the train.
There are even characters in the play who are "audience members," asking questions about the town. (hey! just like we'll ask the audience member about the town!) Though Wilder may have meant them satirically, they ask pretty good questions for our purposes, about town activities and character: is there drinking? Do people care about social equality? What do they do for culture?
In thinking about a play that features a town as a main character, one of the temptations is for something to *threaten* the town, and for the town to be saved. But real towns don't quite work that way: in Our Town there are some minor changes afoot: they're building a new bank downtown and putting in a time capsule, horses are being replaced by "auto-mo-biles," some people leave and some people die -- but the town remains, in character, the same -- like a river it flows around obstacles and just absorbs them, until they become part of the town too.
But things *do* change on a SMALL scale -- small as compared to the town, but still large for those who are involved. George and Emily get married, which affects not only them, but their families. Big events happen, which may be the kinds which happen to everyone, but strike home for people nonetheless: the characters take time out to MUSE about events big and small: the full moon, marriage, youth, death, the weather. Everything that happens to you is important, if it's happening to YOU. It's important in the noticing. Emily says near the end, "We don't have time to look at one another" -- when we see characters *looking,* we see what's important to them in that moment, even if it's "just" the full moon or the coming rain.
Aside from all this big stuff about Life and Death, there's also useful practical character information to be gleaned. The characters live their everyday lives full of nuance: they gossip about people who live in town and who've left. They grouse at each other about hurrying up for breakfast. They chat while they're doing something useful like stringing the beans. They have pet hobbies and interests that are only mentioned in passing, but to them are whole lives: the chicken incubator, research about the Civil War and about Napoleon. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Gossip, gossip, gossip. It's the details that make stories specific instead of universal; aren't there endless stories about people growing up, getting married, and dying? It's all in the details.
And even more practical and technical than talking about details are the conventions of movement onstage. Thinking about how to make the stage seem bigger than it is. Characters bump into and talk to invisible townspeople extras. One young boy comes in from somewhere, throwing a ball up so high that sometimes he has to take six steps backwards to catch it. Theatrical convention is thrust to the forefront, with no scenery to speak of: climb a ladder and you're upstairs -- look over the top of the ladder and you're looking out the window. Lots of the action in the play is space-objects: stringing beans, washing dishes, even the doctor has a space-object bag. And the actors clean up their "props" before they leave the stage.
In short, I guess it's the abstract setting, but the total commitment to the characters' concrete reality that's a takeaway, plus the affection for the town, and the cataclysmic feelings that arise from the everyday. We're shooting for all of the nostalgia with none of the depressing. ;o) The real-town feel withOUT Wilder's abstraction FROM it (see Act 3).
Here's a clip from the drugstore scene between Emily and George -- from a Lincoln Center production starring Penelope Ann Miller as Emily, Spalding Grey as the narrator, and baby Eric Stoltz! as George:
Link to the Drugstore scene on YouTube -- no embedding for me!
And here's the part where George tries to go see Emily on their wedding day, and ends up stuck in the kitchen with her dad instead. (this is from some adorable college production, so the video is lo-fi -- BUT, you get the sense of the family being all irreverent with each other):
Labels: Let It Snow 2009
posted by Mandy at
4:09 PM
1 Comments:
I watched part of the Lincoln Center scene without the sound and noticed how amazing their space object work was. Sure, they had limited movement to rehearse how to do, but still. Watch Spalding Gray make the drinks and then watch them drink them.
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