Revitalizing Our Town

Oct. 8, 2025 - DENTON - Most of us have heard of Our Town. Most of us read the play in high school. Or were supposed to.

"Back in high school, the first reaction was, 'Oh, gosh, this play is so boring,'" TWU Professor of Theatre Patrick Bynane said. "I get where that comes from. I think that was probably my first reaction. You kind of want to make fun of the stage manager. 'Here we are in Grover's Corners. Nothing much happens here. And we're gonna show that nothing to you for two hours.'"

Most us didn't think about the play beyond those superficial elements, disregarding the fact that playwright Thornton Wilder's work won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for drama, or the fact that Our Town is still being performed 87 years later.

Must be something there we missed.

"In all fairness to all of the hard-working teachers out there who teach Our Town, I think most people get the play wrong," said Bynane, who is directing TWU Theatre's production of Our Town. "I think it often gets taught and produced by people who think of it as a lovely bit of nostalgia. America way back when, when we were all innocent. Sweet George and Emily falling in love, weddings and the families and all of that. I've seen plenty of productions like that and they drive me crazy. I think Wilder was after a much larger target. Big thoughts about big philosophical issues. Where we are in the universe, about life. It's not about changing Wilder's great words. It's about trying to listen to what Wilder was really trying to tell us."

Our Town will open at Redbud Theater on Oct. 14-15 before taking a day off to avoid conflicting with the "Boo at the U" Halloween festival on Oct. 16. The play will resume with weekend shows Oct. 17-19.

Bynane is unabashedly a Wilder fan.

"For me, he might earn the mantle of greatest American playwright," he said. "With all due respect to the other great ones out there, he was a lot more experimental than everybody ever gives him credit for. He had spent a decade writing one-act plays that all played with the same stage conventions that you see pop up in Our Town. And it really is fascinating to read those one-act plays because you can see he's experimenting with devices that show up in Our Town. It's one of those works where it finally all comes together.

"I knew at some point I wanted to tackle Our Town and try and avoid a lot of the pitfalls that I see that happen with other productions and certainly with those who think of it as sweetly sentimental and not much more. Try to get to the big issues I think Wilder was really trying to tackle with the play."

So how do you better communicate Wilder's ideas? It's a matter of taking the cues from Wilder himself and presenting the play with the tones, emphasis and staging he intended.

"Too many productions of Our Town embrace the nostalgia," Bynane said. "But it isn't a nostalgia piece. Wilder's written two great characters (George and Emily) who we watch over the years. They're in their early teens at graduation and then married, and in their early to mid-20s throughout the duration of the play. Those are really different moments in everybody's life. It's not about changing Wilder's great words. It's about trying to listen to what Wilder was really trying to tell us."

Wilder lived almost 40 years after writing Our Town, so he sat through stage and screen productions that missed the mark on his message. He had to be frustrated.

"I know he was," Bynane said. "He was an avid writer of letters. For Our Town in particular, he ended up writing different prefaces, trying to say, 'no, this is the style of the show.'"

Wilder's inspiration came from travels in his youth through Europe in the 1920s, where he was exposed to German Expressionism, which shaped his style and emphasis on reducing elaborate props and sets, which he intended for Our Town.

"All he wanted were a collection of bentwood chairs, a couple of A-frame ladders and a couple of trellises," Bynane said. "Everything else is going to be the actors making the world come to life on stage.

"So we have a balcony. There's a famous balcony scene. George is calling across the window and hoping Emily will help him, and Emily's trying to get him to look at the moon with her. Originally, that was two young actors just climbing up six-foot wood A-frame ladders as if they were leaning across an alleyway to speak with one another. You could tell as you read the various prefaces he wrote that except for the original Broadway production, everybody ignored it and kept on trying to put more stuff into it. When the movie adaptation comes around in 1940, it really doesn't work. Wilder kind of has a little sense of it. You can read it in the letters he wrote to the producer."

What Bynane and his cast are doing is listening to Wilder. Minimalist scenery. Bentwood chairs. Instead of A-frame ladders, they're using reinforced scaffolding which doubles as different settings. The trellises Wilder wanted.

"If the actors don't make this world come to life through their relationships and their physicality, then we haven't really made the world," Bynane said. "I love that challenge in this play."

Bynane is also picking up the pace of the play, bringing it in under two hours.

"This masterwork is only about nothing if you're not listening to what's really being said," he explained. "There's a whole lot happening here. People falling in love, people dying, people failing, becoming alcoholics. Loving married couples but also bickering couples who don't seem to like each other. It's got all of that. When you start looking for those things, our students figured out that maybe it's time to go back and look at this play with fresh eyes.

"And let's not read it the way that my teacher back in high school told me I was supposed to read it."

Out Town

Performances
Oct. 14-15, 17, 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 18, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Oct. 19, 2 p.m.

Tickets
$10 for adults, including TWU faculty and staff.
$5 for students, children and senior citizens.

Cast
Stage Manager - Ash Hook
Doc Gibbs - Dinvela Adam
Mrs. Gibbs - Victoria Cortez
George Gibbs - Ash Vance
Rebecca Gibbs - Amyah Starkes
Mr. Webb - Ezra Pleimann
Mrs. Webb - Kendall Madkins
Emily Webb - Hayley Shephard
Wally Webb - Johnny Geren
Joe Crowell/Si - Heidi Davis
Howie Newsom/Sam Craig - Gabe Hawthorn
Simon Stimson - Wes Miller
Constable Warren - Jay Matherly
Mrs. Soames - Julia MacLeod
Prof. Willard/others - Ana Rossey
Joe Stoddard/others - Kathleen Bonilla

Media Contact

David Pyke Digital Content Manager [email protected]