Filmed performance of Our Town

I found a great performance from 1989 Lincoln Center production. This video can be seen on www.youtube.com by clicking on following link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLWewZO6z1w.

This is just Act 3 but as I find this act the most important, I can judge by this extract. I find this production excellent! To be honest, I found this video a month ago and I got inspired by it. This was the moment when I realized that the best way to present Our Town is to show Emily’s heart-breaking monologue. And personally, I felt that this play really spoke to me (much more than reading this part). The acting of Emily character deserves a prize. 

Quotes from the play

As I already stated several times, the play Our Town has its own characteristic beauty. It carries great philosophical questions about life. That is why I chose quotes from the last part of the book that I find more important that the first and second acts.

Emily says in the Third Act “Oh, Mother Gibbs, I never realized before how troubled and how… how in the dark live persons are. “ This quote is the first that shows that when we die, we see that the others who live do not appreciate their lives.

Another interesting idea that the author plays with is that the dead people can return in past and live it again. However, it isn’t that easy. As the Stage Manager says “You not only live it; but you watch yourself living it.” This is one of the reasons why going back to past days is painful and the dead people do not recommend it.

When Emily returns to the day of her 12^th birthday, she is desperate because she wants to tell her mom about the importance of life but Mrs. Webb doesn’t listen. Emily has a heart-breaking speech “Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama. I married George Gibbs, Mama. Wally’s dead, too…”. The speech continues and Mrs. Webb responds like she didn’t hear Emily. She talks about a birthday present. I feel that the speech is very emotive and it reflects Emily’s despair and hopelessness.

Another emotive quote is when Emily cannot take the pain of living her 12^th birthday again and talks to the Stage Manager “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.”. Emily is hit by the fact that she cannot truly live her life, that she cannot change the things and that her life, meaning the run of the individual days, seems wasted and shallow.

This realization is summed by a nice question that Emily asks “Do any human beings realize life while they live it?- every, every minute?”. And the Stage Manager responds by a simple “No” and adds that “The saints and poets, maybe—they do some.” This dialogue seems to bear hopelessness of life and that we actually cannot do anything to “realize life while living it.”

These are the quotes that I find important and touching. This is the reason why I started to like Our Town despite the usualness of the previous parts. 

Task 8: Response to a critical piece

The reason why I chose a review by Oscar E Moore from Talk Entertainment is that I enjoy that Mr. Moore finds the beauty of Our Town in the very true philosophic ideas. Even though what he reviews is not only the original play, but mainly a theatre performance, he concentrates on the best passages of the work that should be appreciated.

The first thing I enjoyed was the phrase “Thornton Wilder must be chatting up a storm with his cemetery friends about this [performance]“, which refers to the Third Act of Our Town that partly takes place in cemetery and the dead characters are having a conversation.

The author of the review masters in summarizing the plot and gently foreshadows the main theme as “in order to love life we have to have life and to have life we have to love life and we should not be blind to what is important. To really look at each other to really listen to one another and to love one another before it is no longer possible to do that.” This might not be very understandable for the first reading but when understood, it carries a great intellectual value.

Only great writers can comment on the universality of this play as following “A thousand years from now this play will still resonate with its real and heartfelt sentiments. This is the way they were, living and dying. This is what is really important. Being happy with your loved ones. How life should be valued. It all passes too quickly.” Using such cogent phrases, he perfectly describes and reveals the power and beauty of this drama.

I identify with Mr. Moore’s opinion on Our Town in spite of my previous comments on the dullness of the book.

The review and the source of my quotes can be displayed by opening this link:  http://talkentertainment.com/c-9346-Thornton-Wilder%E2%80%99s-Our-Town-%E2%80%93-Timeless-Classic-Off-B%E2%80%99way.aspx

Protagonist and Antagonist

The next task should be about protagonist and antagonist. Well, there really are no good or bad guys in Our Town. The only division of people is in the third Act where there are two camps; the dead and alive. Still, they don't fight. 

Nevertheless, the main idea of the play is that LIFE holds us down and we cannot appreciate living our lives. Thus, we can say that LIFE limits our chances to be happy and fulfilled by every single moment. LIFE is the enemy of all people wishing to enjoy every day.

Does it make sense? I might have over-complicated it :D

The Author

Thornton Wilder, the author of Our Town, was born in 1897 and comes from a well-educated family. His father was a US Consul General in Hong Kong and Shanghai. 'Wilder's mother was a cultured, educated woman who instilled a love of literature, drama, and languages in her children" (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/ourtown/ei_wilder.html).
Thornton studied Greek and Roman classics, then archeology, and French literature. He became a professor of French and taught poetry at Harvard.
While living in Chicago, Thornton got inspired by a work of his friend Gertrude Stein called The Making of Americans. Grover's Corners is a fictional town. However, it is based on a town called Peterborough in New Hampshire where Thornton used to spend his summers. He was a great philosopher and that is why he decided to write Our Town, a story of ordinary life together with (what I think) great philosophical ideas on life.
And one more interesting fact: Thornton Wilder is the author of The Matchmaker, a play that was transformed into musical Hello, Dolly!

A really cool video

Dear readers, you might have become bored with my usual blog entries. So if you feel like it, you are welcome to watch this video and hear the answer for a quote I had to copy: "How did a seventy-year old drama about small town in New Hampshire filled with average people living unremarkable lives become America's most produced play ?"

As they say, "It is about the everlasting regret of all those moments of life that go unappreciated."
Cool, right?

Live your day as if it were your last one

If I were to say what the main theme of the story is, I would have to say it is life.
The First Act describes everyday life of people in Grover's Corners, the Second Act informs us how Emily and George got together and their marriage (also part of a human life). But the most compelling reason why I think the theme is Life is based on what I read in the Third Act. There are two groups of people--dead and alive. Emily dies and joins the dead. The author brings an interesting thought that we live our lives shallowly and we don't realize how we're wasting it until we're dead. When Emily returns to the day of her 12th birthday, she is disappointed and unhappy because she sees from distance that nobody appreciates the gift of life. She tries to tell her mother that she will be dead in 14 years and that she loves her but Mrs. Webb doesn't listen.
What do you think? Are we wasting our time and realize it when it's too late?

What's been happening?

Dear readers,
in this next task I would like to comment on what's happening in the Second Act. We moved 3 years forward, so we are in 1904. We are witnesses of the day when Emily and George realize they like each other. Stage Manager moves forward to the time when there are huge preparations for Emily's and George's wedding. It goes as usual; they both are young and just before the marriage they both doubt if they should do it or not. Finally, the Stage Manager plays the role of a clergyman (a man who marries them) and the couple actually gets married. The audience cannot hear much of what the Clergyman is saying because there is Mrs Soames (a lady) who loudly comments how lovely it is...

Since I already finished the book, I know that the Third Act, just as the Second Act does not directly connect the story. Act Three moves the plot forward by 9 more years...
Let's wait for my next entry to learn more about how this story ends! Surprisingly, the ending is pretty exciting  and contains interesting philosophical ideas :)

Our Town Today?

Well, I mean sure, why not.

As the regular readers know, the "plot" of Our Town is pretty simple. It describes lives of citizens of this small town and I believe that anyone could easily decide to write a story about citizens of "Horní Bělá" (I don't know why I chose this name, but it sounds to me like a name of an ordinary town). Sure, the lifestyle has probably changed quite lot during the past century but the stories are universal. Let me give you an example from Our Town... Emily and George spent their whole lives living next door and finally, they got together when they were almost adults and got married. Does it really sound like something that could have happened only in 1900s?

That's all you will hear from me in this entry. Perhaps next time some MAJOR events happen in this little town :)

Characters, action!

As I predicted, there is not much of action happening in the first act of Our Town. However, I realized that the structure of the play is really special.

There is a character called Stage Manager who acts as a moderator of the story. He describes the town, he unveils characters' future (like saying that Rebecca will be married in 30 years) and even sends actors away from the stage ("This was Professor, and thank you again"). The main characters are the Gibbs family and the Webb family who are neighbours and both have children in the same age (George Gibbs and Emily Webb are 16 and Rebecca Gibbs with Wally Web are 11).

The first scene is when Dr Gibbs meets Joe Crowell, Jr., a guy who brings milk, and has quite a dull conversation with him. Then both, Mrs Gibbs and Mrs Webb are trying to wake their children up, make them eat breakfast and go to school. After showing off the children, the ladies talk about their lives. Followingly, we learn that Mr Webb is a publisher in local newspaper. Quite a strange situation happens when George Gibbs bumps into (to us) an invisible lady. He also asks Emily to help him with some school stuff. 

Emily Webb seems to have low self-esteem since she asks her mother if she good looking and pretty. 

Apparently, all the grown-up ladies gather together to sing in a local choir adn of course, to gossip a little--a man called Simon Stimson has an affair.

The day in Grover's Corners is at the end and with the words of the Stage Manager: 

"That's the end of the First Act, friends. You can go and smoke now, those that smoke". 

Introduction of Our Town

For the English Literature assignment I chose a book called Our Town (See? I even put the name of the book in italics. Seems like I've learnt something.) In case you haven't heard of Our Town, let me introduce it.


This play was written by Thornton Wilder, an American playwright and novelist, who is a Pulitzer Prize winner (as the cover of the book screams). He won the first Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey in 1928. Ten years later, he published the play Our Town that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, too. He got the third prize for another play called The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942.
I have to say that this is quite impressive.

In order to present you where this play is set in, I would quote what the Stage Manager in the play says: "The name of the town is Groover's Corners, New Hampshire--just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes, longtitude 70 degrees 37 minutes." And that is the only location where this play takes place.

That's how I imagine the town

The whole play is set in the beginning of the twentieth century and describes life of an average citizen called George Gibbs. Well, looking at the list of characters in the book when half of the names is either Webb or Gibbs, it seems that we will be dealing with two families of the Groover's Corners town.

Let's hope that the story will be interesting since it seems like none of the characters is about to travel around the world to discover the misteries of South America.

Welcome strangers!

Welcome at this blog! This is the very first blog that I ever dared to create, so let's hope it won't be totally messed up. Some of you might know how talented I am when it comes to technology... With some luck, I could manage to keep this blog alive for the whole English Literature assignment.