OUR TOWN.[共36页].docx

OUR TOWN*(1938)Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)Thornton Niven Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin on April 17, 1897. He spent much of his childhood in China, where his father served as U.S. consul general to Hong Kong and Shanghai. He attended the China Inland Mission School, Chefoo (Yantai), Shandong before returning to the U.S. to complete his high-school education in California. From 1915-17, he attended Oberlin College in Ohio, which was known for its China connection. He served in the Coast Artillery Corps in the First World War. After the war he completed his college studies at Yale and then spent a graduate year studying archeology at the American Academy in Rome. After his got his MA in French at Princeton, he taught at the Lawrenceville School and later at the University of Chicago. In the Second World War he served with the Air Forces Intelligence in North Africa and Italy from 1942 to 1945.As the only author to receive Pulitzer Prizes for both drama and fiction, Wilder is best known for his award-winning works: the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and two plays, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). In the early part of his career, Wilder was more successful with his novels than with his plays. Besides The Bridge of San Luis Rey, other works of fiction that brought him fame include The Woman of Andros (1930), Heavens My Destination (1935), and The Ides of March (1948). The plays collected in The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays (1931), however, reflect Wilders broad knowledge of European culture, and two of his plays, Pullman Car Hiawatha and The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, demonstrate some of the staging techniques and thematic concerns for which Wilder would later become famous. In 1938 Wilder made his special impression on the theatre with Our Town, which established him as a major American dramatist.His reputation as a playwright also rests on two comedies, The Skin of Our Teeth and The Matchmaker (1957). The latter is a revised version of his play The Merchant of Yonkers: A Farce in Four Acts (1938).Wilder was Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard in 1951-52, although he did not publish much during the 1940s and the 1950s. His one before the last novel, The Eighth Day (1967), was a major success of the latter part of his career and won him a National Book Award.From A treasury of the Theatre, vol. 2, 4th edition, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1970.1Thorntons father, Amos Parker Wilder (1863-1936) was born in Maine and he attended Yale, where he earned a B.A. in 1884 and a Ph.D. in 1892. After short stints of teaching in Connecticut and Minnesota, Wilder became a journalist, working in many places such as New York, Albany, Philadelphia, and New Haven. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him consul general in Hong Kong. He remained in the consular service (moving to Shanghai in 1909) until poor health forced him to resign in 1914. He then returned to New Haven where he directed the Yale-in-China Association and returned to journalism. Throughout his life Wilder was a nationally renowned public speaker.ACT 1No curtain. No scenery. The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light. Presently the Stage Manage; hat on and pipe in mouth, enters and begins placing a table and several chairs down stage left, and a table and chairs down stage right. "Left" and "right" are from the point of view of the actor facing the audience. "Up" is towards the back wall. As the house lights go down he has finished setting the stage and leaning against the right proscenium pillar watches the late arrivals in the audience. When the auditorium is in complete darkness he speaks:Stage Manager: This play is called "Our Town." It was written by Thornton Wilder, produced and directed by A....; [or: produced by A.. ..; directed by B....]. In it you will see Miss C....; Miss D....; Miss E....; and Mr. F....;Mr. G. and many others. The name of the town is Grovers Coners, New Hampshire, just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The First Act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn. [A rooster crows] The sky is beginning to show some streaks of light over in the East there, behind our mountin. The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go. [He stares at it for a moment, then goes up stage] Well, Id better show you how our town lies. Up here—I That is: parallel with the back wall] is Main Street. Way back there is the railway station; tracks go that way. Polish Towns across the tracks and some Canuck families. [Toward the left] Over there is the Congregational3 Church; across the streets the Presbyterian . Methodist andUnitarian are over there. Baptist is down in the holla by the river. Catholic Church is over beyond the tracks. Heres the Town Hall and Post Office combined; jails in the basement. B。