The Dramaturgical Process

"Our Town" Drama Unit Task Statement:

"You are holding in your hands a great American play. Possibly, the great American play. If you think you're already familiar with Our Town, chances are you read it long ago, in sixth or seventh grade, when it was lumped in a tasting portion of slim, palatable volumes of American literature along with The Red Pony by John Steinbeck and Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome. You were compelled to read it, like nasty medicine force-fed for your own good, when you were too young to appreciate how enriching it might be. Or perhaps you saw one too many amateur productions that, to put it kindly, failed to persuade you of the play's greatness. You sneered at the domestic activities of the citizenry of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and rolled your eyes at the quaint-seeming romance between George Gibbs and Emily Webb. You dismissed Our Town as a corny relic of Americana and relegated Thornton Wilder to the kitsch bin along with Norman Rockwell and Frank Capra.... You are not alone. I have a confession to make: I didn't always appreciate the achievement of Thornton Wilder, either. Like many of you, I had read Our Town when I was too young and had seen it a few times. I thought I knew it and, frankly, didn't think much of it; I didn't get what was so great about it. That is, until I happened to see the 1988 Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Gregory Mosher, an experience which remains one of the most memorable of my theatre-going life. I was so mesmerized by its subversive power, so warmed by its wisdom, so shattered by its third act, that I couldn't believe it was the same play I thought I had known since childhood. I went home and reread the masterpiece that had been on my shelf all along, and pored over the text to see what Mosher and his troupe of actors (led by Spalding Gray as the Stage Manager) had done differently. As far as I could tell, they had changed very little. I was the one who had changed" (Marguiles, Donald. Foreword. Our Town: A Play in Three Acts, by Thornton Wilder, Reissued ed., New York, HarperCollins Publishers, 2006, pp. xi-xii).

We will become dramaturgs in order to understand the world of Grover's Corners and its impact on contemporary theatre. We will explore the following essential questions throughout the unit:

1. How can the story of one’s life be affected by the narrator?

2. How does the structure of a play affect or influence its overall thematic meaning?

3. How can a play communicate realistic conflicts and provide the audience an opportunity to reflect on their own understandings of their lives? Essentially, why this play? Why now?

Once we have explored the dramaturgy process, we will move to our next role as a playwrights to develop a missing scene from the play. Using research and knowledge of Wilder's life and experiences, you will work in production teams to compose an alternate missing scene incorporating dramatic elements as modeled by the play.