ENGL 4603/5413, AMST 5833: American Drama

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Study Guide 2: Our Town

 

Stage Manager

  1. What multiple functions does the Stage Manager serve in the play?
  2. In what ways is the Stage Manager a nonrealistic theatrical device?
  3. In what ways is the use of the Stage Manager contrary to the usual devices of drama?
  4. What devices in other plays are similar to the Stage Manager in Our Town?
  5. The Stage Manager’s knowledge of the past, present, and future
    1. On what occasions does the Stage Manager reveal his knowledge of the past?
    2. On what occasions does the Stage Manager reveal his knowledge of the future?
    3. How does the Stage Manager’s knowledge of the past, present, and (especially) future add to the effectiveness of the play as a whole?
  6. The Stage Manager’s dialect
    1. What label would you use to identify the Stage Manager’s dialect?
    2. What nonstandard features are present in his dialect?
    3. What, if anything, does his dialect add to the play as a whole?

 

Setting

  1. What kind of background scenery does the script of the play call for?  Is this scenery realistic or nonrealistic?   
  2. According to Wilder’s own explanation (page 155), why did he make this decision about scenery? 
  3. What other purposes might be served by the kind of scenery the script describes?  
  4. What stage properties (props) does the script call for?  How do the stage properties serve multiple functions? 

 

Other Theatrical Elements

  1. What, if anything, does the script say about lighting?  What purposes does the lighting serve?
  2. On what specific occasions in the plot of the play do townspeople sing the hymn “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds”?  What is the importance of each of these occasions?  What is the effect on the audience of hearing this song repeated?
  3. What other uses of music and sound effects are evident in the script and in performance?  What might the music and sound effects add to the production as a whole?
  4. The script of the play calls for actors to mime various actions. What are some of these mimed actions?  What are some of the reasons the playwright relies on mimed actions?  Is mime a realistic or nonrealistic device?

 

Chronology

  1. In what year does each of the three acts of the play take place?  What is the main action of the plot in each of those acts?
  2. Why are the three acts in this particular order?  
  3. What actions in each act are flashbacks, taking place before the main action of the act? What are the purposes and/or effects of using flashbacks?    

 

Life in Small-Town America in the Early Twentieth Century

  1. The play makes many references to aspects of early 20th-century small-town American culture that have changed in the past 100 years—and in many cases had already changed when the play was written in 1937.
    1. What texts are the most important cultural touchstones in Grover’s Corners (as evidenced by their being selected for inclusion in a sort of time capsule)?
    2. Where do doctors deliver babies?
    3. How do families get milk?
    4. What social functions do drugstores serve?  What drinks are popular?
    5. How are homes secured against intruders?
    6. What percentage of the population is married?  At what age do people usually get married?
    7. What kind of sex education is available to young people?
    8. What is the leading cause of death of young married women?
    9. What other cultural differences do you observe between life in this play and American life today?
  2. The play includes quite a bit of supposedly factual information about the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire.
    1. Through what characters does the audience get this factual information?
    2. What kinds of facts are revealed?
    3. What is the significance of these facts to the meaning of the play as a whole?
  3. Do the specific details about early 20th-century American life and about Grover’s Corners detract from the play’s universality?  Why or why not?

 

Criticisms of the Play

What is your response to each of the following criticisms of the play?  Do you agree or disagree that these are weaknesses?  Why?

  1. The play is not “dramatic” enough (114b); it contains too much narration and not much action.
  2. The play unquestioningly promotes middle-class capitalistic values.
    1. What specific values does the play promote?
    2. How do these values relate to the American Dream?
  3. The play relies on nonrealistic stage techniques.
  4. Emily’s death gives the play an unhappy ending.  (To correct this problem, in the 1940 Hollywood film based on the play, Emily wakes up after dreaming that she has died.)

 

Theme

  1. According to the Foreword in the textbook, although the play is commonly interpreted to be a positive affirmation of traditional American values, the play also reflects a more subversive, unsettling ideology.
    1. What are some of the traditional, reassuring aspects of the play’s ideology?
    2. What are some of the subversive, unsettling aspects of the play’s ideology?
    3. Which of these two ideologies gets more emphasis in the script?
  2. Explain how each of the following quotations relates to the play’s theme.  (Read the entire passage, not just the opening line copied below.)
    1. Stage Manager on the immortality of the human spirit: “We all know that something is eternal. . . .”  (87b-88t)
    2. Mrs. Soames on the human condition: “My, wasn’t life awful—and wonderful.” (93m)
    3. Emily to Mrs. Webb: “Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute. . . .” (107)
    4. Emily’s farewell to the world: “Good-by, Good-by, world. . . .   Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?”  (108m-b)
  3. In Wilder’s own preface to the play, what does he say is the play’s theme (154b)?  How could this theme be restated as a declarative sentence rather than a question?