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I’ve just finished reading the article in American Theatre this month regarding Thorton Wilder’s) famous play.

The author of the article, Lori Ann Laster, begins the journey in her pre-teens inside her middle school gymnasium, with the broad statement: “Like many Americans…” I guess, I’m not in that group. I don’t know whether to feel gypped or not. I also don’t know why my all-American hometown, which it was—Fredericktown, Ohio—home of the FFA Jacket—failed to deliver on this one. I think I do feel gypped. Regardless, I digress into another small instance of my all-too-familiar penchant for simmering injustice. That is to say, I didn’t see the play in my pre-teens. In fact, I had no encounter with the play at all until 2007 at Cleveland Public Theatre—actually, that isn’t wholly true—my teacher and mentor, Mike Geither, virtually insisted to one class that we watch Spalding Gray in the video version, which I now have (but haven’t watched—maybe I’ll do that tonight)—but that really doesn’t count as that’s only hearing about the play, not experiencing it.

In reviewing my blog, I find that I did no review of that 2007 performance, which really shocks me. The performance was rated the “most lyrical staging” of 2007 by Scene and was, in fact, really stark and terrific for a host of reasons. Chris Seibert played the part of Emily Webb with a deep earnestness that I’ll not soon forget—and which sent me spiraling back to those terrible days of urgent adolescent yearning that were emotionally and, in certain places, physically painful. George Gibbs, played by Len Lieber, did an equally fantastic job in his earnest portrayal.

In reflecting on the piece I’ve had to dig about on he web. I found the one positive review above and then one negative review in the Free Times by James Damico, who must have some personal dislike of Bobgan as his review is so sharply hysterical. There must be some deep impulse to love Thorton Wilder’s) purely and some desire to be touched on his quivering breast by Wilder’s “superior intellect.” I, for one, was able to see beyond such shallowness as the casting and into the emotion of the piece and production; else Damico just likes create a certain high-pitched hysteria, as he clearly likes boasting and ego flashing: demonstrated by his cheap sarcasm obnoxiously brought to the fore by his unnecessary recitation of musical fodder regarding a hypothetical staging by Cleveland Orchestra of Pomp and Circumstance. As well, it’s clear; he couldn’t resist the inappropriateness of stirring in disgusting suggestions of pedophilia. In fact, it’s amazing how much sexual repression I’ve picked up on in so short a review as that by Mr. Damico; perhaps this observation points to the source of the high-pitched hysteria? It’s also nice and lovely to get Mr. Damico’s authentic praxis on how Our Town should be staged, complete with a recitation of pages 24-25 of his Our Town Staging Guide, 2nd Edition, on the “specific gravity” of the Stage Manager: because, God-knows both the “genuine and would-be” theater critic is the true knower of all things playwriting, play-building, and play-producing—(as demonstrated, no doubt, by the number of directing awards on his desk).

I since have found another negative review, though less prurient.

There was much physical movement in the production at CPT that included the use of chairs and ladders and a bare set. The movement of chairs, to my mind, was exceptional in that the movement very nearly effected what I would suggest as “camera angles” on the stage: one moment Emily was at stage right and George was at stage left, a quick few movements and all was reversed. For a “theater in the round” as was sort of instantiated at CPT for this play, I thought the “camera angles” were extraordinary and the movement gave a vitality to the piece. It also, for me, was in keeping with Bobgan and Seibert’s use of stools in their production of Caucasian Chalk Circle for STEP. I later learned, of course, that the starkness of the set, the chairs, and even the ladders were a part of Wilder’s directions. And, of course, learned that this was perhaps the crowning achievement of the piece—or one of them, certainly at the time it was written.

As the American Theatre article discusses, the stage in mid- to late-Thirties was “stuck” in trenchant “realism”—massive sets, the well-made play. As Laster writes:

A bare stage, no props, the use of mime, breaking the fourth wall, dismantling the unities of time and place—these were radically innovative devices that astounded audiences at the time when kitchen-sink realism dominated the serious stage, and boulevard comedies and melodrama proliferated…It was by removing the diversion of realistic clutter and tapping into the imagination of audiences that Wilder strove to make what was on the stage reflect the verities of life: “Our claim, our hope, our despair are in the mind—not in things, not in scenery.” 25

The CPT production shocked and stunned me, but more to the point perhaps, I was stunned by Wilder. I am still amazed at the effect of all the component parts put together in three acts led to that transcendence. The New York Times in 1938 wrote, “under the leisurely monotone of the production there is a fragment of immortal truth,” which still came through in 2007, demonstrating the power that Wilder cast up through his piece.

The article in American Theatre goes on to discuss the productions of Our Town at four theatres in the U.S. this year, and some in the past, including the variety of methods being used in the staging to re-create the production for modern audiences—all of which, of course, would be repellant to Mr. Damico, violating pages 1-5 of his Our Town Staging Guide, 2nd Edition, on the “purity of production values” and “reverence for superior intellects.” Of course, the use of bunraku-style puppets at Two River Theater Company would send Damico stark-raving mad and he’d no doubt rush the stage in a frothy-mouthed ecstasy screaming something about the trauma done to the “timeless nature of small-town existence” by the use of puppetry.

Laster ends her discussion of Our Town by drawing our attention to when it was written and what was happening in the world, and notes that a certain resurgence of the piece may be due to a similar impulse in our own time—a yearning for a simpler, more pure time in our American past—that small Grover’s Corners in our idyllic dream of America. Although the great grandson of Wilder is quoted speculating that Our Town is staged every night somewhere in America. How accurate that speculation is difficult to gauge.

An interesting commentary by Mike Harden in the Metro section of the Columbus Dispatch which I saw this weekend while visiting my parents drew another possibility, as one message of Our Town, certainly one drawn from Emily Webb’s visitation of her family after she had shuffled off her mortal coil, is to live life in the present, to not allow pettiness and selfish focus to cause you to overlook the wonderful life you have in front of you right now. A certain, strong, Buddhist metaphysics indeed.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention, at least in passing, the similarity between Our Town and Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, both plays that draw as their subject the life of a town and its inhabitants. Perhaps sometime I’ll discuss this one a bit more as Geither turned me on to it and I found Thomas’ piece equally as compelling as Wilder’s.

I am continuing here with the second article from American Theatre from April that looked at Wallace Shawn. I know I am taken by him as a subject because I was acting as a dramaturg at Cleveland Public Theatre when they were producing The Designated Mourner, and I was surprised to see a photograph from that production in the American Theatre issue. I have, in fact, posted the piece that I wrote for the program at CPT on this blog.

The request that I write a program piece for the play was something I hadn’t expected and like many other young writers, I suppose, my experience of Wallace Shawn came from other areas of popular culture than through theatre. In fact, until I was asked to do the piece I didn’t even know he was a playwright. I read several critical articles, a book, read The Designated Mourner, Fever, and Aunt Dan and Lemon. I found that Case had a copy of My Dinner with Andre which I found fascinating and actually had an epiphany of sorts when Andre started talking about his “coincidence” experiences with The Little Prince and the hand tracings–for more on this, quite a fascinating talk–go to http://www.cloudnet.com/~jwinder/dinner.htm for a full transcript of My Dinner with Andre and do a browser search for “Saint-Exupéry” to find the section. (I am fascinated with stories of coincidence, which is one reason why I love the Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster, but I digress…)

The main point being that I found myself digging Wallace Shawn pretty hard during that time because he was definitely new and definitely different than where I had come from in the world of playwrighting and these articles in American Theatre really took me back to that experience.

The article on Shawn as a playwright covers a lot of the same ground that I did in my piece, so I’m not going to dwell on it. The only thing that I will point out is a cool radio play version of the Designated Mourner.

I think the two things that struck me most about this article are 1) Shawn’s true sense of disappointment in American theater and the sense, that we all know, that no one is going to it and that there are some things worth seeing and the true challenge of making that connection–of interested, active, passionate people to the theatre that would satisfy them. And for me, this is one of the big marketing challenges I see ahead for convergence-continuum: how do you get at the people who would be most interested in your theater when they have a notion of theatre that is different from what you’re doing; and further, how to connect with people who haven’t been in a theatre in years… 2) deals with something that Shawn says, on page 27:

I’ve always thought the best use of my talent would be as a literary writer. It would be a fantastic thing to have an impact on some specific problem in society–to write a play that whould have an influence on the debate about capital punishment in this country. But I’ve sort of decided I’m not going to organzie my life that way. And I’m going to follow this strange, somewhat old-fashioned belief in the idea of inspiration and that your subject picks you. You don’t pick the subject.”

I find that statement at once fascinating and also confirming for me. I’ve been dealing with this question, with no resolution, for some time. That is, what does it mean to be a playwright? Should I write “the well-made play” about a given topic. Should it be a well-formed, two-act play that deals with an issue–the injustice shown midwives in our society, the injustice shown empirics in the past (as did my play The Empiric), or any number of other issues that any one of us can come up with–always the most popular and glaring being the “abortion” play. That is, do you write plays that address topical themes of your day–relevant in some way to the culture or society–or do you seek some other level in yourself. Some form of expression that “finds you” as Shawn says, not that you choose.

For me, this was the main break between how I was approaching playwriting and how I have been altered since. I wrote The Empiric in 2005-2006 and it is about injustice and outrage; driven by sincere personal anger. Then I wrote A Howl in the Woods, now Lord of the Burgeoning Lumber–and it was authentic, pure–not motivated or consciously driven in any way by the logical mass between my ears. I let it direct me and it direct itself. The result? Something that will be staged, for one. Something that still is unsettling to me–because I don’t have an answer for what it is or what it means. It is from me, a part of me, and yet, the “me” that makes that definition has no way of defining clearly what it is–it is beyond a label.

So, knowing that Wallace Shawn addresses this question frankly in this article in American Theatre has lent me some comfort in a way of proceeding.