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Our Town
Thornton Wilder
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eBook - ePub
Our Town
Thornton Wilder
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About This Book
This beautiful new edition features an eyeopening Afterword written by Tappan Wilder that includes Thornton Wilder's unpublished notes and other illuminating photographs and documentary material.
Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.
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Information
Act I
No curtain.
No scenery.
The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light. Presently the STAGE MANAGER, hat on and pipe in mouth,
enters and begins placing a table and three chairs downstage left, and a table and three chairs downstage right.
He also places a low bench at the corner of what will be the Webb house, left.
âLeftâ and ârightâ are from the point of view of the actor facing the audience. âUpâ is toward the back wall.
As the house lights go down he has finished setting the stage and leaning against the right proscenium pillar watches the late arrivals in the audience.
When the auditorium is in complete darkness he speaks:
STAGE MANAGER:This play is called âOur Town.â It was written by Thornton Wilder; produced and directed by AâŠ. (or: produced by AâŠ. ; directed by BâŠ. ). In it you will see Miss CâŠ. ; Miss DâŠ. ; Miss EâŠ. ; and Mr. FâŠ. ; Mr. GâŠ. ; Mr. HâŠ. ; and many others. The name of the town is Groverâs Corners, New Hampshireâjust across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The First Act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn.A rooster crows.The sky is beginning to show some streaks of light over in the East there, behind our mountâin.The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go,âdoesnât it?He stares at it for a moment, then goes upstage.Well, Iâd better show you how our town lies. Up hereâThat is: parallel with the back wall.is Main Street. Way back there is the railway station; tracks go that way. Polish Townâs across the tracks, and some Canuck families.Toward the left.Over there is the Congregational Church; across the streetâs the Presbyterian.Methodist and Unitarian are over there.Baptist is down in the hollaâ by the river.Catholic Church is over beyond the tracks.Hereâs the Town Hall and Post Office combined; jailâs in the basement.Bryan once made a speech from these very steps here.Along hereâs a row of stores. Hitching posts and horse blocks in front of them. First automobileâs going to come along in about five yearsâbelonged to Banker Cartwright, our richest citizen ⊠lives in the big white house up on the hill.Hereâs the grocery store and hereâs Mr. Morganâs drugstore. Most everybody in town manages to look into those two stores once a day.Public Schoolâs over yonder. High Schoolâs still farther over. Quarter of nine mornings, noontimes, and three oâclock afternoons, the hull town can hear the yelling and screaming from those schoolyards.He approaches the table and chairs downstage right.This is our doctorâs house,âDoc Gibbsâ. This is the back door.Two arched trellises, covered with vines and flowers, are pushed out, one by each proscenium pillar.Thereâs some scenery for those who think they have to have scenery.This is Mrs. Gibbsâ garden. Corn ⊠peas ⊠beans ⊠hollyhocks ⊠heliotrope ⊠and a lot of burdock.Crosses the stage.In those days our newspaper come out twice a weekâthe Groverâs Corners Sentinelâand this is Editor Webbâs house.And this is Mrs. Webbâs garden.Just like Mrs. Gibbsâ, only itâs got a lot of sunflowers, too.He looks upward, center stage.Right here âŠâs a big butternut tree.He returns to his place by the right proscenium pillar and looks at the audience for a minute.Nice town, yâknow what I mean?Nobody very remarkable ever come out of it, sâfar as we know.The earliest tombstones in the cemetery up there on the mountain say 1670â1680âtheyâre Grovers and Cartwrights and Gibbses and Herseysâsame names as are around here now.Well, as I said: itâs about dawn.The only lights on in town are in a cottage over by the tracks where a Polish motherâs just had twins. And in the Joe Crowell house, where Joe Juniorâs getting up so as to deliver the paper. And in the depot, where Shorty Hawkins is gettinâ ready to ...