Our Town

This was my first production of this American classic play. It gave me an opportunity to work, not only on this play, but another project I hope to complete before I pass on to my reward, a biography of the so far overlooked American Eclectic designer Raymond Sovey, who "chose the properties" for the original production. I had the great privilege of working with Ray as his Prop Master when I was but a whelp in summer stock at the Playhouse on the Green. From that work, I knew that the "look" of the original was to be anything but haphazard. Shortly before I came to Desales, I got a call from Tony Walton who was designing the Broadway revival of Our Town for Paul Newman. He had stumbled on my webpage discussing Ray and wondered if I knew why Ray had had a drop made reproducing the back wall of the Henry Miller Theatre when it moved to the larger Morosco later in the run. I didn't know that that had happened, but it didn't surprise me. I knew that the "choice of properties" Ray had made was based on his extraordinarily acute sense of composition. Not just any ladder, or chair would do. The overall picture would have to be perfect to suit Mr. Sovey. And I knew that my production would have to seem improvisational, but in fact be as carefully composed as I could make it.

Having worked with set designer Will Neuert and costume designer Amy Lobmeyer on The Man Who Came to Dinner, I knew I could talk to them abstractly and trust their artistic sense to give me what I wanted. Amy's costumes were naturalistic and perfect historically and the palette was exactly right, capturing the dusty reality of small town New England, but also conveying an air of the supernatural for the last act. Will's task was mor difficult as the horseshoe thrust that is the Labuda auditorium would demand a sculptural--that is to say three dimensional approach to picturization. And the sightlines from the extremes are somewhat liminting. I also wanted to be able to use the upstage center area simultaneously with the downstage for a number of scenes, so I wanted an invisible rake, which is to say it should diminish to zero on its downstage edge rather that have a step up. It must look like the stage floor, not a set piece. This was, of course more expensive than a more conventional rake, but having no scenery costs money, after all.

Will had also found a fairly new material called textaline that resembled a heavy black scrim, but it could be cut and hung without a frame. This made it possible to mask the wings without seeming to mask the wings. When I wanted the sound man or the prop man to be visible, I could place him in a bit of light upstage of the scrim, light him, and voila! When I wanted the focus back on the action center stage, sneak out the same lights and instant control. I wanted all the sound effects to be "live" and having the production of the visible would enhance the "theatricality" of the piece. With the textaline panels, I could move them onstage and still control when they were seen and not seen.

Creation of an "empty stage" was another hurdle. The upstage wall of Labuda includes a doorway to a storage unit and a number of garishly colorful safety stations. Will provided a seemingly careless arrangement of stacked flats that hinted at the shape of the mountain near Grover's Corners.

And bentwood chairs! Years of moving furniture onstage and off have taught me the beauty and utility of bentwood chairs. Ray taught me they mix with virtually anything. They are sturdy and incredibly light weight. They can be moved noiselessly and without effort wherever they need to go. And I wanted a passel of them. The entire wedding party needed to be seated at them; the entire graveyard needed to be populated by them.And they had to match! One or two different styles and the focus would go to the odd man out. Perfect neutrality was wanted. Fortunately, Will knew of Anything But Costumes, a prop man's Valhalla. How often has that wonderful establishment less than an hour's drive from campus in New Jersey supplied us with exactly what was needed.

Add sublty beautiful and specific lighting by Liz Zernechel (the photos don't capture the quality or the colors at all) and the production had the right look. The scene above is the little scene with the choir practice upstage at the church and father and son downstage at "home." This shot was taken f rom the balcony. And as the scene was quite dark, the colors are far from accurate. The church seemed to float upstage in a beautiful dreamlike space.

Another aspect of the original that needed to be present was a sense of the "new." The staging of the original was thought of as very avant garde--now it is almost old hat and quaint. As the story might easily become cloying, a sense of that radical newness of the production style seemed essential. I had seen a couple of productions at Stratford Canada which made me rethink this sort of minimalist staging. I wanted to appropriate some of the techniques I had seen that had impressed me very much. . For example, the courtroom (an arrangement of furniture only) in The Trial of Ezra Pound was struck by the actors leading into one of Pound's reveries and when the courtroom suddenly reappeared with the actors bring all the furniture back on, the courtroom was in a different relationship to the audience--the furniture was the same in relation to each other, but the room had seemed to rotate. It took Ezra and the audience a moment ro realize where he and they were. This momentary confustion was a real coup d' theatre. I had identified several places in Our Town where the shifting scene could revolve or shift in full view of the audience. One or two were deep sixed by the presence of the rake. Moving the oversized ladders and controlling them with children atop proved impractical so rotating the houses was out of the question. But my big wedding shift worked beautifully. I set up the "church" all the way upstage so that the people entering would come in from downstage and move upstage and face upstage, thus creating the "back of the church." As the bride entered, the "church" turned itself inside out as she "walked" down the aisle in place and pivoted at the last moment as the stage manager (preacher) moved down center. A major traffic problem, but executed cleanly, it was both clear, and theatrical. It even seemed simple.

The reviews were positive.

Program note for Our Town:

Tonight's play is a true American classic. It received the Pulitzer Prize, was made into a feature film, and has been revived on Broadway garnering a Tony Award and a Tony Nomination as recently as 2003. Since Frank Craven originated the role of the Stage Manager in 1938, Henry Fonda, Spalding Gray and Paul Newman have played it on Broadway. Hal Holbrook played him in an all-star cast twenty-five years ago and will repeat the role for the Hartford Stage Company later this year. At this moment two major regional theatres-Geva and Trinity Rep-have Our Town on their boards. I doubt there is a high school with a drama program that has never done this play.

Still, very few plays from this era are ever produced; why is this one so durable? It seems to me there are many reasons. At least part of the popularity of this play-at least for a producer-is that it calls for very little scenery; it even pokes some gentle fun at people who "feel they have to have scenery." But this "innovation" is hardly "American." Thornton Wilder had lived part of his early life in Hong Kong and Singapore where his father was Consul General where he was no doubt exposed to the local culture. This use of very little scenery is actually a convention of Chinese Opera. Even the stage manager is borrowed from his Chinese Opera counterpart who sets necessary chairs and tables in full sight of the audience and makes himself generally useful.

Of course, Wilder uses these convention is a totally new and "American" way. One would logically suppose that this lack of scenery and particularizing detail would lead one to a preoccupation with universal truths. Listen carefully and you'll hear huge numbers invoked over and over again: "thousands," "millions" and "hundreds of millions." But Wilder also makes the play remarkably specific: he sets it in a town with a specific name, and a full and specific history; all the characters have names. So "Our" town is really "their" town. And yet it belongs to all of us. By telling us the "facts about everybody in our town," Wilder lets us in on truths about ourselves. It touches us not because we are from New Hampshire, but because the specific things in the lives of the Gibbses and the Webbs and the Hirsey's remind us of universal things in our own lives. And this is the real reason for Our Town's amazing popularity. So come with us to Grover's Corners, New Hampshire tonight and journey home into your own heart.

Wayne S. Turney, February 2007