Our Town

This is the 75^th anniversary of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Hence, everybody’s doing it: it’s playing at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, as well as three Portland theaters. It was the third most produced full-length play in high schools last year. And yet, Southern Oregon University’s auditorium was only about two thirds full, while the devised piece next door was sold out.

Director Paul Barnes cites an unnamed “many” who consider Our Town to be “the great American play.” Why, then, doesn’t it pack them in?

Our Town is the dream of American conservatism: to take the idolization of Main Street and the insularity it represents and cover the earth with it. It takes the mystique of the American small-town, the simplicity of a bygone era, and explodes this nostalgia to universal proportions. Wilder’s universalization of historicized white American culture smacks of Manifest Destiny. For example, Professor Willard’s historical prologue spans millions of years. His mention of the indigenous inhabitants of the area serves only to underpin Caucasian claim to the land: the Indians were not there that long; they have entirely disappeared; if anything’s left of them, it’s an implied secret in three families’ genealogy.

The paradox is that Our Town maintains an inordinate amount of American stage time by playing into fantasies of American universalism, and yet it can’t compete with the unknown devised piece White Fugue next door. Do I think Our Town should be abandoned? No, Wilder has something to say about white American conservatism, and he really says it beautifully. Should it be done less? Well, we’re not all white conservatives, are we?