Discussion Questions

Our Town

 

Stage Manager

  1. What multiple functions does the Stage Manager serve in the play?
  2. In what ways is the Stage Manager an unusual and nonrealistic theatrical device?
  3. How does the Stage Manager’s knowledge of the present, past, and future add to the effectiveness of the play?
  4. What nonstandard features are present in the Stage Manager’s dialect?  How does his dialect add to the play as a whole?
  5. Does the role of the Stage Manager on stage in this production affect you differently than it does on the page?  How? 

 

Setting

  1. What kind of background scenery does the script of the play call for?  Does the production follow the script in its use of scenery? 
  2. According to Wilder’s own explanation (page 155), why does he make this decision about scenery?  What effect does the scenery (or lack of it) have on you in the theatre?
  3. What stage properties does the script call for?  How do the stage properties serve multiple functions?  In this production, how do you respond to the play’s use of stage properties?

 

Other Theatrical Elements

  1. What aspects of lighting are specified in the script?  How is lighting used in the stage production?
  2. On what three 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 hymn repeated?
  3. What other uses of music and sound effects are evident in the script and in performance?  What are the effects of these devices?
  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?  In the theatre, how does the use of mime affect you?    

 

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. What actions in each act do NOT take place in the year of the main action of the act? In the script, what is the purpose of the flashbacks?  On stage, what is the effect of the flashbacks?  

 

Content

  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?
    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?
  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?

 

Criticisms of the Play

Respond to each of the following criticisms of the play:

  1. The play is not “dramatic” enough (114b); it does not contain enough action.
  2. The play unquestioningly promotes middle-class capitalistic values.
  3. The play relies on nonrealistic stage techniques.
  4. The play has an unhappy ending because Emily dies.  (For this reason, in the Hollywood movie based on the play, Emily only dreams that she dies.)

 

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. In the script and in this production, which ideology gets more emphasis?
  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 (155b)?  How could this theme be restated as a declarative sentence rather than a question?