Greek Town: Thornton Wilder's Our Town

Thornton Wilder’s tragedy, Our Town, was unique at the time of its initial performance in 1938 because the techniques he had incorporated into the play were seemingly experimental: minor scenery, some furniture, few props.¹ Action that normally would require the use of props—preparing breakfast, for example—is mimed by the players.  Wilder’s approach was risky, considering many theatrical productions in the 1930’s focused on costumes, sets and music—that is, were lavish performances.  The Great Waltz (1934) had 180 performers who wore a total of 500 costumes.  An innovative hydraulic system moved the massive sets, and a 53-piece orchestra closed the spectacle with Strauss’ The Blue Danube.  Billy Rose’s $340,000 budget for Jumbo (1935) prevented the production from being profitable.  Hellzapoppin' (1938) was similar to a circus—entertaining the audience via comedians, impersonators, singers, dancers, a magician, musicians, dwarfs, clowns, and pigeons.

Wilder’s techniques suggest that his sentiments about the state of theater in the 1930’s were similar to Antonin Artaud’s in The Theater and Its Double:

     An idea of the theater has been lost. […] At the point of 
     deterioration which our sensibility has reached, it is certain that
     we need above all a theater that wakens us up: nerves and heart.
     […] In the anguished, catastrophic period we live in, we feel an
     urgent need for a theater which events do not exceed, whose 
     resonance is deep within us, dominating the instability of the 
     times.

     Our long habit of seeking diversion has made us forget the idea
     of a serious theater, which, overturning all our preconceptions, 
     inspires us with the fiery magnetism of its images and acts upon 
     us like a spiritual therapeutics whose touch can never be
     forgotten.² 

The therapeutic value of theater is not a new concept.  In Poetics (350 B.C.E.), Aristotle predicates his idea of tragedy on the social benefits of poetry, the tragic effect being analogous to the treatment of emotions.  “A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions” (6.1449^b.24).³  Through the influence of dramatic action on the spectator’s imagination, according to Aristotle, the morbidity that besets him/her would intensify to the point of crisis and then abate by way of an emotional outburst that might include tears.  The spectator would leave the theater mentally healthy, purged of his/her anxieties.

The tragic plot is designed to affect an audience, and to be properly effective, the action needs to be of appropriate magnitude.  In Poetics Aristotle suggests a simple precept: “Plot must be of some length, but of a length to be taken in by the memory” (7.1451^a.5).  With respect to the duration of the incidents represented on the stage, however, the suggestion is more precise.  “Tragedy,” Aristotle states, “endeavours to keep as far as possible within a single circuit of the sun, or something near that” (5.1449^b.14).  Aristotle does not extensively discuss the supposed unity of time.  It seems the restriction of the action to the events in a single day had more to do with the concentration of the action than with doubts about the ability of the audience to accord the passage of time on the stage with the passage of time in the auditorium.  Aristotle does not require the imitation of action to be exact, nor did the Greek poets have any such idea.  It was the sixteenth-century humanists, such as the critic Lodovico Castelvetro, who invented the unities.

For example, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (458 B.C.E.) takes place over an indefinite period of time.  The watchman sees the beacon on the mountaintop presumably soon after the sack of Troy, and it would take several days for Agamemnon’s ship to cross the Aegean, but it is convenient to have the interval covered by a choral song that lasts minutes.  Likewise, the action of Our Town spans longer than a single day (1901 – 1913), including temporal shifts forward and backward.  But one easily could argue that the action of Our Town occurs in one day; the drama begins “just before dawn” (4) and ends at “night” (112).
     

Aristotle mentions nothing in the Poetics about the unity of place.  Greek theater in the fifth century was not well adapted to facilitate frequent changes of scene, but it is likely that, by the time of Sophocles (496 – 406 B.C.E.), painted screens oriented the audience.  The existent tragedies do not require a multiplicity of scenes, and when there is a scenic change, little effort is necessary to shift the action from place to place.  The seventeenth-century French poets adopted unity of place to enhance the difficulty of their art.  Although they developed a style of classical drama that was successful—Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid (1636), for example—it was divergent from the style of Greek tragedy.  Wilder adheres to unity of place in Our Town: “The entire play takes place in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire” (2).

Aeschylus’ Troy existed, but Wilder’s Grover’s Corners is fictional: is that consequential?  No, according to Aristotle, because art is mimetic.  “Tragedy is essentially an imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery.  All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of activity, not a quality” (6.1450^a.16).  Tragedy imitates nature and edifies to the extent that it imitates life, life’s essential and universal essence.  Tragedy is the imitation of an action, a phenomenon.  Unlike history, it represents not what is said to have occurred, but what might or should have happened in order to provoke pity and fear, which is the intent of tragedy. 

The tragic effect was achieved by limiting the scope of the action.  Aristotle defines unity of action in terms of the relation of a whole to its parts: “Now a whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end” (7.1450^b.26).  His formulation involves the principle of logical sequence which the Poetics affirms throughout as essential to a well-constructed plot.  Moreover, a series of incidents firmly linked in the order of cause and consequence would not only have unity, but would prevent the inclusion of extraneous incidents:

     The truth is that, just as in the other imitative arts one imitation
     is always of one thing, so in poetry the story, as an imitation of 
     action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its 
     several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or
     withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the 
     whole.  For that which makes no perceptible difference by its
     presence or absence is no real part of the whole.  (8.1451^a.30)

Aristotle’s principle of composition has been quoted as often as it has been violated.  An adherence to his precept would result in a narrative structure that is rare, but not impossible, to find.  The three-act structure of Our Town (“Daily Life,” “Love and Marriage,” “Death”) unifies the action, and Our Town focuses on one story with no subplots to complicate things.

The focus of Greek tragedy was more extensive than what is in the current canon; Aristotle mentions many tragedies of which there are no vestiges.  Of the plays that have been preserved, those that deal with domestic horrors appear to have been especially effective.  According to Aristotle, “Though the poets began by accepting any tragic story that came to hand, in these days the finest tragedies are always on the story of some few houses, on that of Alcmeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, or any others that may have been involved, as either agents or sufferers, in some deed of horror” (13.1453^a.19).  The connections among relatives, friends and associates were important in ancient Greece and Rome, and the action in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon certainly aroused deep emotions in fifth-century spectators.  Since Shakespeare, however, we have been tending to think of the tragic element in terms of the reluctant hero’s inner conflict and the social pressures that determine his/her behavior.

Wilder shifts the focus back to domestic issues.  The characters frequently exhibit their love toward each other.  In the first act, familial love and friendship predominate.  Evening falls on Grover’s Corners, and the Congregational Church’s choir, under the direction of Simon Stimson, begins to rehearse.  George and Emily discuss algebra.  Dr. Gibbs and George speak about responsibilities and allowances.  Mrs. Soames and Mrs. Webb gossip about Simon Stimson’s alcoholism.  Mrs. Gibbs and Dr. Gibbs talk and walk with their arms linked.  The constable makes his rounds to ensure all is well.  Mr. Webb talks to his daughter, Emily, who is enjoying the moonlight at her bedroom window.  And the Stage Manager calls an end to a typical day in Grover’s Corners.  In the second act, romantic love blossoms into marriage after George and Emily overcome their doubts and fears.  In the third act, selfless, spiritual love is shown.  George does not utter a word, but when he throws himself onto Emily’s grave, his deed speaks loudly.

In Greek tragedy, when one expects the chorus to utter wisdom, it usually provides formal precepts and trite maxims—chiding excess, counseling moderation, and brooding on the folly of pride and the dangers of hubris.  The chorus, as an actor in the tragedy, is seldom in a position to generalize philosophically on the significance of the action.  To infer the meaning of a tragedy—assuming it has a meaning—one must look, not at what is said, but to what is done.  Thus, one discovers that tragedy is seldom informative.  Often it is ambiguous.

The Stage Manager in Our Town is similar to the chorus in Agamemnon.  Aeschylus’ chorus is aware of both the principals and the spectators.  At times it separates the audience from the action to concentrate attention on itself, and occasionally the chorus unites the two dramatically and emotionally.  It is a participant in the action, an actor, and it is a mirror, something that brings into proper proportion the action.  Aristotle states that “The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and take a share in the action” (18.1456^a.25).  Wilder’s Stage Manager is a neutral character, an actor both inside and outside the play.  He addresses the audience on the present, the past, and the future.  Temporal limits bind him, yet the Stage Manager is both beyond and outside time.  He comments on the action and tells the audience about events that occur offstage.  In Act II the Stage Manager informs the audience that the title of the act is “Love and Marriage.”  George attempts to see Emily, but Mrs. Webb does not allow him to see his bride.  The Stage Manager interrupts to present a scene from the past, the time when George and Emily became aware of their love for each other.  The Stage Manager asks Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs to explain to the audience how the parents reacted to the engagement.  While the actors arrange chairs to be pews for the wedding scene, the Stage Manager talks to the audience about the importance of marriage.  The wedding begins with the Stage Manager as the clergyman.

Our Town begins at dawn with the birth of twins in a nearby town and ends at night with the death of Emily Webb Gibbs in childbirth.  As one life ends, another begins.  Throughout the play the Stage Manager directs the audience’s attention to the repetition of the cycle of life.  In his opening monologue, he announces that the names on the tombstones in the graveyard are the “same names as are around here now” (6).  At the beginning of Act II, the Stage Manager affirms that the sun has “come up over a thousand times” (47).  And in the third act, he mentions both: “lots of sun and moon and stars” and “Over there—are the old stones” (86).

Some critics consider Thornton Wilder a religious writer and Our Town a religious play.  But, excepting the Congregational Church and the wedding scene, there is nothing explicit about God or heaven.  The Stage Manager contemplates the word eternal at the beginning of Act III:

     Now there are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out
     and look at’m very often.  We all know that something is 
     eternal.  And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth,
     and it ain’t even the stars … everybody knows in their bones
     that something is eternal, and that something has to do with 
     human beings.  All the greatest people ever lived have been 
     telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised
     how people are always losing hold of it.  There’s something was
     down deep that’s eternal about every human being.  (87 – 88)  

Aristotle does not discuss, nor did he need to discuss, in the Poetics the religious or the moral or the political objectives of the poet/dramatist.  Aristotle’s theater is not a forum for the exchange of ideas.  A tragedy is neither an allegory nor an exemplum nor a vehicle for the expression of opinions.  From Aristotle’s standpoint tragedy is designed to move, not to teach.  Similar to Agamemnon, Our Town concludes with no resolution.  The moral issue is left open.

Grover’s Corners is ruled by laws and customs that the inhabitants heed, but it is laughable to conclude that the imitation of banality was Wilder’s objective.  The Stage Manager is assiduous in his effort to discern patterns, but the play truly defies rationalization, and the Stage Manager suggests that the meaning is explicable only in regard to the eternal thing which resides in each of us.  God only knows what that is.

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          ¹Thornton Wilder, Our Town (New York: Perennial-Harper, 2003).

          ²Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. by Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Evergreen-Grove Press, 1958) 84 – 85.

          ³Aristotle, On Poetics, trans. by Ingram Bywater, in Great Books of the Western World: Aristotle II, Vol. 9 (Chicago: Encylcopædia Britannica, 1952) 681 – 699.