By Bill Fair
Thornton Wilder left exploration of the “human condition” in theater to others. His work shows the condition of being human.
Wilder eliminated the sets, props and artificial humanity to place what it is to live and breathe, love and die center stage.
You’ll want to see the Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town with those you hold dear. Opening night is Friday, Feb. 9 at 8:00 p.m, with two performances on Saturday, Feb. 10—a 3:00 p.m. matinee and another evening performance at 8:00 p.m.
The Frazier Mountain High School Drama Club’s Little Theatre and a group of community actors add join the long list of those who have provided a space and voice for Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer prize-winning work. The play has touched seventy years of audiences and is loved by actors.
Yesterday is today in Our Town, just as yesterday is today in our town right here on the mountain. The genius of Thornton Wilder shows why that is true.
Consider these facts: In 1905 in the United States, the year and setting for the play, the average life expectancy was 47 years. The leading causes of death were, in a tie for first, pneumonia and influenza, second, tuberculosis and bringing in that third spot, the ever popular diarrhea. Ninety percent of American physicians had no college education, just attendance at a “medical school,” many of which were labeled ‘substandard’ by the government.
The average U.S. worker in 1905 made 22 cents an hour, bringing in the princely sum of $200 to $400 per year. Then again, income tax hadn’t come in yet.
Only 14 percent of homes had a bath tub, much less indoor plumbing. It wouldn’t do any good to call your neighbor to use theirs, because only eight percent of homes had a telephone.
“Take-out” hadn’t come in yet, which was fine, because there were only 144 miles of paved roadway and only 8,000 cars in the entire country! The maximum speed limit in most cities at ten miles per hour, so by the time you got your take-out home, it would have been cold anyway. Yesterday is today.
Wilder’s vision kicks in to remind us that whether you made your morning cup of coffee in a farm house as the cock crowed in 1905 by grinding beans in a handcranked coffee grinder, or grab your caffeine wake-me-up by plunking down $5.25 for a decaf low-fat minty mocha latte with extra whipped cream at Starbucks in 2007, certain facts of the human adventure never change. Wilder knew that.
The heat of physical passion has not changed. The blind fear and confusion of wanting,—yet desperately not wanting—to leave both the nest and those who gave you “you” has not changed.
The chest-swelling pride and awestruck wonder of seeing your child gasp their first breath and stretch tiny fingers toward you, followed in just the blink of an eye, by those same fingers—now bigger than yours—holding the hand of another and waving good-bye to you…this has not changed. No change either in the cold, hollow hole that the death of those you hold dear leaves in your heart.
Tickets are $7.50 for adults, $5 for Students and for Seniors over 60. Presale tickets are available at Ace Hardware and Coffee Cantina.
This is part of the February 09, 2007 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.
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