How to survive Yosemite in July
Amy Beddows 5:26 p.m., June 18
A cartoon in the New Yorker, March, 1938, shows three women standing before a ticket booth. One asks, obviously worried: "Does this play have scenery?"
Thornton Wilder's Our Town had opened in February. Many a first-nighter thought they'd made a mistake. There was no curtain and, except for bricks and boxy radiators on the rear wall, the stage was bare. Was this a rehearsal?
Except for some chairs, tables, and stepladders, Wilder wanted no sets, few, if any props, and everyday apparel for costumes.
The cartoon typifies initial reactions. There was something too humble in the look.
Pundit's scratched their heads for precedents. Marc Blitzstein's musical, The Cradle Will Rock, had been evicted and moved 20 blocks away, in 1937. They had to rent a piano, while the cast performed in the audience.
For one performance, also in 1937, teamsters refused to move sets into the theater, and a performance of Father Malachy's Miracle (an adaptation of Bruce Marshall's novel) had actors in expensive costumes on a bare stage. As in Chinese theater's use of placards, the actors held up signs to announce a location: one said "St. Margaret's Church."
In "Some Thoughts on Playwriting," Wilder acknowledged another influence. Shakespeare's plays were staged with little scenery. This encouraged audiences to "piece together" the story with their imaginations.
The theater of his time, wrote Wilder, "loaded the stage with specific objects." But "every concrete object on stage fixes and narrows the action to one moment in time and place."
Wilder's aim for Our Town, currently at Cygnet Theatre, was the opposite. No matter where the play is set, "it is precisely the glory of the stage that it is always 'now' there."
Thornton Wilder pantomiming a scene for the actors in Our Town.
Comments
Prosperina June 28, 2011 @ 10:30 a.m.
Pantomime might be a lost art? I thought so until I watched a recent performance of 'Miss Julie' -- the actors did the pantomime of drinks and cleaning, etc. so effectively that when the actress playing Miss Julie sat on a 'wine glass', the audience took great note of it and it became the topic of discussion after the show ended. My point is this: Wilder gave his audience a lot more credit than most playwrights do. When we read a novel, our imagination fills in the details of descriptions of scenery or how a character looks, the minute details of facial expressions or clothing colors and other physical characteristics -- in 'Our Town' and similarly bare-staged productions, the audience is just as capable of imagining the details. And, likely finds it much more satisfying to let their imagination create the scene by filling in details from their own experience. Our subconscious thrives on doing such creative work - especially within such a rich framework provided by Wilder's dialogue and narrative phrasing. We leave the theatre feeling full and satisfied because, although the words are Wilder's, we have completed the picture with our own experience of colors and 'our town' of streets, and neighbors and such. Lovely reminder of how the connection between the performers, the stage and the audience makes for a unique experience each and every time.
Jeff Smith June 28, 2011 @ 2:02 p.m.
David Mamet, as always straddling the bottom line, says: "The test...of a good set is: is it better than the bare stage? The same may be said of costumes...Any set that makes us go 'ohh' is ruining the play."
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