Anna Jennings

​​​​​In the script, Thornton Wilder introduces the world of Our Town, with a simple stage direction:

“No curtain. No scenery. The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light.”

Wilder invites the audience to fill in the empty space around the actors. He purposefully draws attention to the fact that we are watching a play by casting the Stage Manager as a narrator to guide us through the story. This use of metatheatricality—a quality that marks the self-awareness a play and its characters have of the theatrical situation—was somewhat groundbreaking when it premiered on Broadway in 1938.

Since then, the American theatre has produced countless productions the Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece on Broadway, at regional theatres, on university campuses, at high schools and at community theatres nationwide. In a 1975 New York Times article, director Alan Schneider wrote that Thornton Wilder’s plays “have not so much been ‘revived’ over and over again, and in all sorts of places, as they have almost continuously stayed alive among us.” This is particularly true for Our Town. In fact, SCR’s 2022 production will be the theatre’s third staging; the first was in 1971 and the second in 1998.

At first, some critics rolled their eyes at Wilder’s experiment: One reviewer for Commonweal believed the “stunt makes the play more important than it seems.” Others praised they play’s innovative visual sparseness and all-knowing stage manager: “[The] whole effect gives ten times as much ‘theatre’ as conventional scenery could give,” wrote a reviewer for Time magazine.

Yet, while unconventional for the 1930s, the presentational style of the play is an old form, dating back as far as Ancient Greek theatre when the presence of the audience and their shared experience with the actors played a key role in live storytelling, dramatic or comedic. By removing almost all theatrical artifice, Wilder echoes ancient theatrical practice and lays the framework for an eternal story of daily life, love and death in a community of people. Thornton Wilder regarded people and their lives very highly; to him, “We’re all People, before we’re anything else. People, even before we’re artists. The role of being a Person is sufficient to have lived and died for.”

Wilder is interested in more than the humanity of the characters in the story; he’s also interested in the humanity of the People in the audience. Productions of Our Town must do more than tell a story about the citizens from the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners from May 7, 1901 to the summer of 1913. Each production of Our Town also has a responsibility to reflect its community. It is the acknowledgement of the portrayal of human relationships, emotions, and lives that allows a community to explore onstage the practice of storytelling. Ultimately, the stripped-down nature of Our Town highlights the shared humanity between the audience and actors—the essence of theatre.

Dramaturgy Protocol

Actor Packet

Written just before the pandemic but developed during that unprecedented time of isolation, Adam Szymkowicz’s Such Small Hands carries within its DNA a concentrated intimacy. As theatres shuttered and artists retreated to their homes, play development moved into the virtual realm. Through screens and digital connections, artists found new ways to explore and refine theatrical works despite the unprecedentedness of it all. This constraint - the inability to gather in large groups, to feel the energy of a full rehearsal room - paradoxically enhanced the play's examination of intimate human connection.

Perhaps it's fitting that a play about the profound connection between two people emerged from a time when human connection felt simultaneously precious and precarious. The forced isolation of the pandemic brought into sharp focus the small daily rituals that bind us together - the morning coffee, the shared jokes, the gentle touches - elements that form the heart of Paul and Marie's story. The play's intense focus on these minute interactions reflects both its development process and its thematic concerns.

Just as Paul and Marie navigate their increasingly confined world, the artists developing the piece worked within their own limitations. When in-person work became possible again, it happened in small, careful pods of regularly tested artists—but still lacked the most essential component, a live audience. The careful, measured approach to returning to live performance paralleled the delicate dance of Paul and Marie's changing relationship - the way they must redefine their intimacy as their world contracts.

This World Premiere production speaks powerfully to universal experiences of love, loss, and mortality while maintaining an almost microscopic focus on the details of one couple's shared life. The title's reference to the final lines of E.E. Cummings' 1931 poem “somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond” celebrates how the smallest gestures can contain infinite meaning.

[..]

(i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands “somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond,”

EE Cummings (1931)

Hands are not just a metaphor for the power of human connection, but a reminder of the power of focused, intimate storytelling in recovering after prolonged fear and isolation. Fortunately, the constraints of pandemic-era playmaking are fading memories, but the stories it shaped are emerging as proof of the resiliency of theatre and the power it wields in human connection. And finally, it is time for Paul and Marie’s story to exist fully as a piece of theatre with the shared intimacy of a live audience.

• Emily Fuchs

• Emily Gates

• Miriam Groleau

• Emma Harris

• Nic Holt

• Grace Otto

• Leah Taylor

• Dylan LaRay Welker

I am SOO bored of people (usually people over 40) talking about how this generation of young people are worse off because of technology. It’s probably true in some ways, but really the Digital Age just demands a new way of processing information and experiencing love. For me, this play represents (in 50+ different ways) the joys and struggles of the Digital Age. We learn to contend with more distractions, split our attention, and decide what to we need to look at and when.

In developing this production, Fly’s dramaturgy was crucial in cracking open the play. It led to fruitful experimentations with the order of scenes, integration of media, and maximizing this patio’s unique space. This production is an experiment of some of the big ideas I have about theatre—namely, my belief in using everyday spaces as venues to revitalize theatre in the digital age. I chose to stage this play in Passé because it is a public space that allows both physical togetherness and virtual isolation. It is this tension between physical and virtual realities that is at the core of Love and Information.

Anna Jennings

I find Arthurian Legends fascinating in their rhizomatic and ever-changing nature. I initially proposed this idea because I thought that the breadth of characters and stories would allow us many different options for theatricalization. My interest in feminist revision on existing texts drove my artistic vision in this devised project.

The Generator: The Death of Arthur artistic team included four co-director/writers/dramaturgs—Fly Steffens, Vanisha Pierce, Angelina Valencia, and myself—under the supervision of Greg Pierotti who also functioned as a director/writer/dramaturg.

Normally, the devising process spans years, but we accomplished a miniature, compressed version culminating in a work-in-progress performance based on Arthurian Legends. While adaptations of Arthurian Legends abound in film and literature, theatrical adaptations are surprisingly rare. As a source in the public domain, the Legends’ structure, scope, and tradition of adaptation through various philosophical and historical lenses makes it an excellent source for adaptation and devising.

Check out our process: here.

A dramaturg is a theatre artist who works with the playwright, director, designers, and actors in developing new or existing plays from the perspective of the audience. In new play development, the dramaturg collaborate with the playwright in the creation of the storytelling mechanics and overall theatrical experience.

​​​​​​For this adaptation, we decided to go the unconventional route and run the original Russian text through Google Translate. The translation was not very good, as you might expect, but it was an intriguing reference for Fly to write a completely new version in their own words. 

Fidelity to the source text varies wildly and is an essential element in the concept of an adaptation of a classic play (I'm a total nerd for adaptation, especially Chekov and Shakespeare). We intended to do a transformative adaptation, or a loose adaptation that resembles, but is ultimately very different from, the original. Most of the original characters and relationships remained, but the plot points, thematic ideas, and overall visual aesthetic would be transformed for a contemporary audience,  experimenting with storytelling elements. 

​​​​​​​The most radical alteration  was the addition of a bear character. A bear is mentioned in the original play (and is also a common symbol for Russia), but Chekov's play was very realistic in style, so of course the bear is never seen. 

Fly and I were interested in the metaphorical power of a bear. In this adaptation, it served as a metaphor for Masha's struggle with alcoholism, which also isn't explicitly in the original, but the symptoms are common in Chekov's characters. 

What constitutes a massive woman? Perhaps a massive woman is a fat woman-- the result of an uncontrollable feminine appetite. Food is able to simulate emotion, intensity, and satisfaction. Therefore, hunger is much deeper and more complex than mere appetite for food. In physics, mass is simply a unified body of matter with no specific shape. However, a woman is held responsible for her body’s shape. Most women, regardless of their actual body size, feel the pressure to lose weight and many suffer from body dysmorphia disorder, an inability to see the body realistically.

To regain control over their hunger and shape, Rennie, Sabine, Carly, and Cel resort to liposuction as the ultimate purge. Madeleine George focuses on women’s negative body image. However, today more than ever, men are experiencing the same pressure. Because most college aged men and women strive to conform to societally established standards of beauty through exercise, diet, and bingeing and purging, as Sabine says, “I think you will find this a quite relevant subject for investigation.”