Production Research Summary Outline

Created by Emily Wilson

A.) Biography of playwright

Born April 17, 1897, in Madison, Wisconsin, Thornton Wilder released his debut novel, The
Cabala, in 1926. Later novels included The Woman of Andros, The Ides of March and The
Eighth Day. He won the 1928 Pulitzer Prize for The Bridge of San Luis Rey, as well as the 1938
and 1943 awards in drama for Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, respectively. He died on
December 7, 1975, in Hamden, Connecticut.

http://www.biography.com/people/thornton-wilder-9531264#synopsis

"Thornton Wilder." Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 11 Nov. 2015. Web. 15 Feb.
2017.

B.) Interviews about the Play in Production

[For each one, insert interview link, title of interview, citing the source, and include a brief
italicized description of the highlights of the interview that would be worth mentioning to a
creative team]
1. David Cromer on Our Town
It's interesting you say people think they know Our Town. I mean, you can't speak for
everybody but it's sort of given to you in high school. It's one of those plays they make you read
in high school or see in high school or be in in high school. I was thinking earlier that it's
about breakfast (laughs). That it's about the universal and the particular in your whole life over
the course of a breakfast.

Walker, Steve. "Director's Cuts: David Cromer On 'Our Town'." KCUR. Kansas City University
Radio, 5 Sept. 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

http://kcur.org/post/directors-cuts-david-cromer-our-town#stream/0

2. Thornton Wilder, The Art of Fiction No. 16

I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human
being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. This supremacy of the
theater derives from the fact that it is always now on the stage The theater is so vast and
fascinating a realm that there is room in it for preachers and moralists and pamphleteers.
Goldstone, Interviewed By Richard H. "Thornton Wilder, The Art of Fiction No. 16." The Paris
Review. The Paris Review, 1956. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4887/thornton-wilder-the-art-of-fiction-no-16-
thornton-wilder

C.) Articles pertaining to the Play in Production

1. Hammonton becomes Our Town for 150th anniversary
 Production Research Summary Outline
Created by Emily Wilson

Jim and I worked together with local historians, said the theaters Co-Artistic Director Ted
Wioncek III, of his collaboration with Donio. All the characters are the same, but the
references made are local. There are also some high-tech touches. The audience will
experience fragrances pumped into the theater, such as floral scents when references are made
to flowers blooming and the scent of coffee when a character makes it.

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/hammonton-becomes-our-town-for-th-
anniversary/article_663f1da0-1bad-11e6-9456-b353f70e7288.html

2. They went and died about it: Staging an incarcerated cemetery

When we performed the play for the population of the prison, the unnamed dead, in their state
green uniforms, were wearing, of course, exactly the same thing as the audience. Which made
the audience very potently the continuation of the cemetery itself. Suddenly there were 200 dead
men, looking across at one another.

Powers, Kate. "They Went and Died about It: Staging an Incarcerated Cemetery."
Thorntonwilder.com. Thorntonwilder.com, 18 June 2013. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

http://archive.thorntonwilder.com/2013/06/they-went-and-died-about-it-staging-an-incarcerated-
cemetery.html

3. Their Town Too

South Coast Repertory plans to go him one better. Its revival of "Our Town," beginning previews
tonight and opening Feb. 20, will have a large cast made up of African, Mexican, Asian and
Anglo Americans--not remotely like any population you'd have found in rural New Hampshire in
1901. The three principal characters will be portrayed by a black female actor who grew up in
Texas (Kimberly Scott, as the stage manager, a white male role); another young black woman
who grew up in Harlem (Sanaa Lathan, as Emily Webb, also a white role), and a Latino man
born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and raised in Phoenix (Jesus Mendoza, as George Gibbs, white
again).

Herman, Jan. "Their 'Town' Too." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 13 Feb. 1998. Web.
17 Feb. 2017.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/feb/13/entertainment/ca-18564

D.) Selected Reviews of other productions

1.Our Town is a challenging, imaginative stage experiment, Henry Millers Theatre,
Manhattan, NY
Now come Thornton Wilder and Jed Harris with Our Town, which last night was put upon the
blank platform of Henry Millers Theatre. Here, too, is a consideration of Time and Death
and of people. It is a poets conception of what a drama should be: a view not closed in by stage
hands flats and props a view of what people want and do and pitiably fail to realize.
 Production Research Summary Outline
Created by Emily Wilson

Chapman, John. "Our Town Is an Imaginative Stage Experiment: 1938 Review." NY Daily
News. Daily News, 05 Feb. 1938. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater-arts/town-imaginative-stage-experiment-
1938-review-article-1.2520089

2. Our Town: Renewal, Not Just Revival, Lyceum Theater, Manhattan, NY

As the Stage Manager, Mr. Gray takes a casual approach - in both dress and manner - to the
role created by Frank Craven and played most recently on Broadway by Henry Fonda. Mr.
Gray's dry offhandedness could stand an ingredient of warmth which might make him a more
congenial interpreter of life in Grover's Corners. It may be, however, that director Mosher
wished to use the Stage Manager as a contemporary liaison between the 1988 spectator and the
long-ago events being recalled. In any case, this well-known performance artist, writer, and film
actor endows the proceedings with humor and crisp authority.

Beaufort, John. "'Our Town': Renewal, Not Just Revival." The Christian Science Monitor. The
Christian Science Monitor, 14 Dec. 1988. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.

http://www.csmonitor.com/1988/1214/ltown.html

3. Amid the Tombstones, a Look Back at Life, Green-Wood Historic Fund, Brooklyn, New
York
While its clear why the director, James Presson, and his collaborators would be drawn to a
graveyard (who needs props when the third act can unfold among actual tombstones?), this
production doesnt have much of a point of view beyond that. And Our Town is a play that
desperately needs a point of view if the scripts delicate balance of cynicism and sadness is to be
pulled off, and its Everyman inhabitants kept from descending into banal hokum.

Rocco, Claudia La. "Amid the Tombstones, a Look Back at Life." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 18 June 2014. Web. 16 Feb. 2017.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/theater/thornton-wilders-our-town-at-green-wood-
cemetery.html#

E.) Production Stills

 Production Research Summary Outline
Created by Emily Wilson

Our Town, Green-Wood Historic Fund, Brooklyn, NY, June 2014

Our Town, Williamstown Theater Festival, Williamstown, MA, July-August 2010

Our Town in Old City, Arden Theatre Company, Philadelphia, PA, May-June 2008

F.) Fun Facts to Know about the playwright and play

 Production Research Summary Outline
Created by Emily Wilson

*Our Town has been made into a ballet and opera.

*In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of
occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German
suicide wave."
*It is the most frequently performed play of the 20th century.