Finding importance in the small things
Following the lives of people from the fictional town of Grover's Corner, Our Town is a selection of beautifully crafted vignettes of everyday life.
The main theme of the play is that in the most ordinary events lie the most extraordinary meanings of our lives—just as youth is wasted on the young, so too is life wasted on the living.
Students Jodi Norris and Oliver Pol say the team is hoping to ‘wake up’ audiences in this age of disruption. “Thornton Wilder gifted us a scaffold that incites development so that each generation can fill it with their own evolving social values. The play is timeless and universal and will always be relevant.”
In getting Our Town from page to stage, THEA 311 students have developed a range of skills they will be able to use in the theatre and beyond.
Focusing on the show’s design, THEA 308 students have collaborated with THEA 311 to create timeless costuming and “an abstract world of cardboard cubes” to set this production apart from its predecessors.
Director Sally Richards hopes audiences will be moved to reflect on how much they rush through life. “This is a challenge to stop, look away from the screen and take a breath,” she says.