Our Town
Thornton Wilder’s celebrated play is set in the fictional American town of Grover’s Corners. Over several decades, the story gradually reveals the events, sorrows, secrets, and hopes that shape the everyday lives of its traditional small-town community.
“This is a simple play that embraces the most complex themes; at the same time, it is a profoundly complex play in which I speak with deep affection about the simplest things in the world,” the author writes. Through his distinctive dramaturgy, Wilder leaves much of the world surrounding the characters to the audience’s imagination. As in Chekhov’s plays, beneath the quiet daily life of a small-town community he reveals both the gentle wonder and the deeper drama of human existence. And, of course, we are led to reflect on the eternal question: what remains of us after we die? How will future generations remember us?
The young Russian-Latvian director Ilja Bocharnikovs shares his thoughts on this play, written with warmth and lyrical sensitivity: “This story is about the simplest events of human life – birth, love, and death. It is about ordinary people whose passions, sorrows, and joys are no different from our own, who reflect on themselves, on life, on the world, and on their place within it. Only when it is too late do they truly learn to appreciate the gift of life.”