New Stages visits Our Town
Classic 1938 Thornton Wilder play is the biggest local theatre company has staged
The classic play Our Town was based by writer Thornton Wilder on another Peterborough – but it’s about to come to a stage right here in our Peterborough.
Our Town is New Stages Theatre Company’s main production for the 2016-17 season. It can be seen at Market Hall April 28-30 and May 2-6 at 8 p.m., except the April 30 show, which is at 2 p.m.
Our Town will be the largest production New Stages has mounted since its founding in 1997.
“It’s one of my very favourite plays,” says artistic director Randy Read.
Tickets are $28 regular admission and $15 students and art workers, and can be purchased from the Market Hall box office, by phone at 705-749-1146 or online at www. markethall.org.
The play stars Read, recent George Brown Theatre School graduate Matthew Finlan, Bethany Heemskerk, Megan Murphy, Andrew Root, Alison McElwain, Tom Quinn, Luke Foster, Patricia Maitland, Wyatt Lamoureaux, Ben Birrell, Dani Breau, Adam Martignetti, Steven Brak, Mark Gray, Samuelle Weatherdon, Logan Sword, George Knechtel and Michael Brennan.
Written in 1938, New Stages remains relevant today.
“I’ve really just wanted to do it since the beginning,” says Read, who plays the Stage Manager, who narrates the action. He played Const. Warren in a production of Our Town years ago.
“It just seemed appropriate (to play the Stage Manager),” he says. “As artistic director, I already lead people through the play.”
Our Town tells the stories of the ordinary people of an ordinary small town, Grover’s Corners, in the years between 1901 and 1913, in three acts – Daily Life, Love and Marriage and Death and Dying.
Burgess wrote it while living in Peterborough, NH and drew from his surroundings.
The play is narrated by The Stage Manager and presented as though it’s still 1938, and he’s relating stories from just a few years before that.
This time out, though, there’s a change – Read says the New Stages production will use contemporary clothing. He’ll even replace the watch his character uses at the start of the play with his own flipphone (outdated, he admits with a laugh) as both a prop and a subtle reminder to the audience to turn off their own phones.
The move speaks to how, more and more, people are cut off from one another despite, or because of, all this technology, Read says – a theme Wilder explored in the play that remains relevant today.
Our Town won the Pulitzer in 1938 and the Tony in 1989 for best revival, and has been adapted numerous times for television and as a musical.
It just seemed appropriate (to play the Stage Manager). As artistic director, I already lead people through the play.” Randy Read