Another Day's Begun

Author: Howard Sherman
Publisher: Methuen Drama
ISBN: 1350123447
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
A work of startling originality when it debuted in 1938, Thornton Wilder's Our Town evolved to be seen by some as a vintage slice of early 20th Century Americana, rather than being fully appreciated for its complex and eternal themes and its deceptively simple form. This unique and timely book shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally – and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture – Another Day's Begun shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved. Every production of Our Town has a story to tell beyond Wilder's own. One year after the tragedy of 9/11, Paul Newman, in his final stage appearance, played the Stage Manager in Our Town on Broadway. Director David Cromer's 2008 Chicago interpretation would play in five more cities, ultimately becoming New York's longest-running Our Town ever. In 2013, incarcerated men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility brought Grover's Corners inside a maximum security prison. After the 2017 arena bombing in Manchester UK, the Royal Exchange Theatre chose Our Town as its offering to the stricken community. 80 years after it was written, more than 110 years after its actions take place, Our Town continues to assert itself as an essential play about how we must embrace and appreciate the value of life itself. Another Day's Begun explains how this American classic has the power to inspire, heal and endure in the modern day, onstage and beyond.

Three Plays

Author: Thornton Wilder
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060512644
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Three of the greatest plays in American literature collected in one volume This important new omnibus edition features an illuminating foreword by playwright John Guare and an extensive afterword for each play drawing on unpublished letters and other unique documentary material prepared by Tappan Wilder. Our Town—Wilder's timeless 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning look at love, death, and destiny is celebrated around the world and performed at least once each day in the United States. The Skin of our Teeth—Wilder's 1942 romp about human follies and human endurance starring the Antrobus family of Excelsior, New Jersey. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1943. The Matchmaker—Wilder's brilliant 1954 farce about money and love starring that irrepressible busybody Dolly Gallagher Levi. This play inspired the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!.

Study Guide to Our Town and Other Works by Thornton Wilder

Author: Intelligent Education
Publisher: Influence Publishers
ISBN: 164542507X
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Book Description
A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for selected works by Thornton Wilder, recognized as one of America’s most respected contemporary writers. Titles in this study guide include The Cabala, The Bridge Of San Luis Rey, Heaven’s My Destination, Our Town, and The Skin of Our Teeth. As a collection of twentieth-century literature, Wilder’s work was influenced by his religious background, his love of classicism, and his worldwide travels. Moreover, many of his stories explored humanist themes and biblical motifs and allusions. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Wilder’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons they have stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work - Character Summaries - Plot Guides - Section and Chapter Overviews - Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

Our Town

Author: Thornton Wilder
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573613494
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 116

Book Description
This play is a study of life, love, and death in a New England town at the turn of the 20th century.

Our Town and Other Plays

Author: Thornton Wilder
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241290120
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Book Description
Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and 'an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life'. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a 'comic strip' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farce which urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life.

Mis-directing the Play

Author: Terry McCabe
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
ISBN: 146169941X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
Terry McCabe, himself an accomplished stage director and teacher of theatre arts, here attacks what he calls the growing decadence that plagues contemporary stage directing. He argues for a radical reorganization of the director’s view of his role. It has become an article of faith in the theatre, Mr. McCabe observes, that a play is about what the director chooses to have it be about. But what right does a director have to treat a play as a found object, to be reshaped to express the director’s concerns? None whatsoever, Mr. McCabe replies. He examines anecdotally a range of work by different directors by way of offering a substantial critique of today’s leading theory of stage directing, and he offers an alternate approach. He challenges the notion that a play is the director’s vehicle for self-expression, arguing that the idea of the director as centerpiece of the theatre tends to distort plays and oppress actors. He explores what it means to direct a play when directing is properly understood as a process of self-effacement. Mis-directing the Play examines the role of the director as collaborator with actors, designers, dramaturges, and playwrights. Throughout, the book’s focus is on shedding the counterproductive myth of the director as creative auteur and urging in its place a return to first principles: the idea of the director as the interpretive artist in charge of putting the playwright’s play onstage.

Thornton Wilder and the Puritan Narrative Tradition

Author: Lincoln Konkle
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826264972
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Book Description
"Fresh examination of the works of Thornton Wilder emphasizing continuities in American literature from the seventeenth through twentieth centuries. Sees Wilder as a literary descendant of Edward Taylor who drew from the Puritan worldview and tradition. Includes indepth readings of Shadow of a Doubt, The Trumpet Shall Sound, and others"--Provided by publisher.

The STACY PLAY - a LOVE SONG - VOLUME I and Other Plays and Poetry

Author: Anne Hamilton
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1458379000
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Book Description
THE STACY PLAY - A LOVE SONG - VOLUME I and Other Plays and Poetry by Anne Hamilton contains a full-length play, short plays, monologues, clown plays, and poetry written in 2010. Seventeen pieces feature a female in the leading role. Kathleen Chalfant premiered the role of Stacy at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City. THE STACY PLAY - A LOVE SONG - VOLUME I is a non-linear drama about Stacy, an artist and scholar. This volume includes eight short plays, five monologues for women, four monologues for men, plays for female clowns, a play for child clowns, a hybrid farce for hearing and deaf actors, a hybrid comedy for a sign language interpreter and an actress, and seventeen new poems.

Critical Companion to Kurt Vonnegut

Author: Susan Farrell
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 143810023X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Book Description
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the most popular and admired authors of post-war American literaturefamous both for his playful and deceptively simple style as well as for his scathing critiques of social injustice and war. Criti.

Exploring Imaginary Worlds

Author: Mark J.P. Wolf
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429516061
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
From The Brothers Karamazov to Star Trek to Twin Peaks, this collection explores a variety of different imaginary worlds both historic and contemporary. Featuring contributions from an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars, each essay looks at a particular imaginary world in-depth, and world-building issues associated with that world. Together, the essays explore the relationship between the worlds and the media in which they appear as they examine imaginary worlds in literature, television, film, computer games, and theatre, with many existing across multiple media simultaneously. The book argues that the media incarnation of a world affects world structure and poses unique obstacles to the act of world-building. The worlds discussed include Nazar, Barsetshire, Skotopogonievsk, the Vorkosigan Universe, Grover’s Corners, Gormenghast, Collinsport, Daventry, Dune, the Death Gate Cycle universe, Twin Peaks, and the Star Trek galaxy. A follow-up to Mark J. P. Wolf ’s field-defining book Building Imaginary Worlds, this collection will be of critical interest to students and scholars of popular culture, subcreation studies, transmedia studies, literature, and beyond.