Seventy-five years ago, The Tower Players presented a classic American tale of life, death, and humanity. This week, they will reproduce Thornton Wilder’s work “Our Town” to pay homage to those first performances. 

“Our hope is that it not only honors the original Tower Players, students, and faculty, but that it honors the impulse to make theater at all, and that it honors the fact that busy, busy students still find the time to make a play,” said director and Associate Professor of Theatre Christopher Matsos. 

The Tower Players will present the play five times between Nov. 9 and 13 in Markel Auditorium. 

As one of the first plays ever produced by the theatre department, this production has allowed Matsos to research the group’s origins more deeply.
“This gave us a chance to really look through that history, which is really moving somehow, and really special,” Matsos said. 

That history has inspired the actors to present the work in a unique way: as a theater troupe.

“Our version of it is a theater company coming together to tell this story of our town,” Matsos said.

The audience is guided through the play by the “stage manager,” played by sophomore Fiona Mulley, who reimagined the role for this production. Typically an omniscient god-like character, Mulley’s version has her own story arc. 

“The stage manager is essentially the narrator of the play; she is kind of the guide to the audience and the actors because our concept for the show isn’t just putting on the play,” Mulley said. “It’s as if we’re a theater troupe putting on this play, so there are two layers to it. In our version, the stage manager is as much the director as the narrator.” 

The story is presented as a series of portraits of the community. 

“It’s the story of two families in the late 1800s growing up in a small town called Grover’s Corners,” said junior AJ Palubinskas. “It tracks their lives, how they intermingle, how they get along with each other, and how they don’t. How they all end up sticking with each other in the end.” 

Written in the early 20th century, the play is unusual, and unlike the overblown productions of its time, this set is simplistic and bare. Wilder even called for many of the props to be pantomimed, Matsos said. 

“His hope was that you focus instead on the relationships and the characters’ journeys,” he said. 

The bare and unadorned nature of the play has been a challenge that the actors have had to overcome.

“One of the major challenges of this play is that it’s very quiet; you can’t rely on big dance numbers or dramatic arguments to keep the audience engaged,” Mulley said. “If we as actors don’t know why we’re doing this play. The audience is definitely not going to get it right.” 

In representing the life of a small-town community at the turn of the century, Wilder’s play illustrates important lessons about human nature and reflects on man’s inability to live in the moment.

“The big lesson of the play that everyone always points to is that, even when we try to value every moment and find what’s special in the minute details of our lives, we always fail,” Matsos said. “And no one, except, as one of the characters says, maybe saints and poets, actually have the ability to catalog and marvel at every moment that makes our lives special.” 

Mulley said she finds the message of the play to be hopeful and comforting, especially for busy students concerned about the future. 

“I think ‘Our Town’ is saying, ‘Take a deep breath; it’s going to be OK, I promise. Even if you don’t understand everything or end up in a different place than you thought you would be.’ It’s a good thing to think broadly and to want to find answers, but it’s not always possible in the way we think it’s going to be,” she said. 

“Our Town” will be shown in Markel Auditorium on Wednesday, Nov. 9 – Saturday, Nov. 12 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 13 at 2 p.m.