schoolyard subversion

Our Town's Theater Revolution

For Our Town, Thornton Wilder made several radical departures from typical theater. For one, he told a small story, focusing on individual lives and the nature of a small town. Second, he removed all the non-essential scenery and costumes so that the audience could focus on that story. And third, he introduced the character of the Stage Manager, and broke down the barrier between actors and audience, making them part of the story too.

"It's a little play with...big subjects...all the little things of life lovingly impressed into it," Thornton Wilder wrote. Our Town was special in that it "transmuted the simple events of human life into universal reverie," as the New York Times wrote. "Nothing happens in the play that is not normal and natural and ordinary." This confused some, because of its radical departure from most plays. Who would want to see a play where nothing happened? By removing the excitement from the plot, Wilder focuses on the dialogue and the acting, thus making his job even harder.

To focus even more on the story, Wilder removed costumes and scenery from the play. The New York Times wrote that "by stripping the play of everything that is not essential, Mr. Wilder has given it a strange, unworldly significance." Again, such unnecessary additions only detracted from the play and Wilder's goal. It also brought the story on stage closer to home. There was no artificial separation, or visible artifacts of some grand presentation, so the audience was less inclined to thing of the actors as something "seperate" and rather as part of a greater whole that existed inside the theater.

With the character of the Stage Manager, Wilder broke down the barrier between the audience and the actors. The New York Times wrote that Our Town "escaped from the formal barrier of the modern theater." The artificial separation of actors from audience was not necessary for Wilder's story. He kept the curtain up throughout the play, to demonstrate that the audience was part of the story too, and could not be so easily shut out. Wilder brought the audience into the story. He made it a quiet little sharing of lives, and the things that mean most to us, rather than a grand presentation on the meaning of life.

Through the combination of these techniques, Wilder moved the play into the "quintessence of acting, thought and speculation," as the New York Times put it. Wilder was dissatisfied with the current theater. He complained that plays were like a "museum showcase" and that the way things were currently done "stifles the life in drama." His radical changes did not please everyone, however. "It will probably go down as the season's most extravagant waste of fine talent," wrote Variety. Luckily, not everyone was so negative. One woman wrote that it was, "the loveliest thing that has been produced in this country for a long, long time -- and the truest." The New York Times raved that it was "one of the finest achievements of the curent stage" and a "hauntingly beautiful play."

Bibliography

Review of Our TownThe New York Times for Saturday, February 5, 1938, page 18, column 3.

Harrison, Gilbert A. The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder. (ISBN 0-89919-197-5)