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.