Our Town

1938 first edition cover from the Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division
Written by Thornton Wilder
Characters Stage Manager
Mrs. Myrtle Webb
Mr. Charles Webb
George Gibbs
Emily Webb
Mrs. Julia Gibbs
Dr. Frank F. Gibbs
Simon Stimson
Mrs. Soames
Joe Crowell, Jr.
Howie Newsome
Rebecca Gibbs
Wally Webb
Professor Willard
Woman in the Balcony
Man in the Auditorium
Lady in the Box
Mrs. Louella Soames
Constable Warren
Si Crowell
Three Baseball Players
Sam Craig
Joe Stoddard

Date premiered 4 February 1938
Place premiered Henry Miller's Theatre
New York City, New York
Original language English
Subject Change comes slowly to a small New Hampshire town in the early 20th century.
Genre Drama
Setting 1901 to 1913. Grover's Corners, New Hampshire near Massachusetts.
IBDB profile

Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives (particularly George Gibbs, a doctor's son, and Emily Webb, the daughter of the town's newspaper editor and George's future wife). Using metatheatrical devices, Wilder sets the play in a 1930s theater. He uses the actions of the Stage Manager to create the town of Grover's Corners for the audience. Scenes from its history between the years of 1901 and 1913 play out.

Wilder wrote the play while in his 30s. In June 1937, he lived in the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, one of the many locations where he worked on the play. During a visit to Zürich in September 1937, he drafted the entire third act in one day after a long evening walk in the rain with a friend, author Samuel Morris Steward.[1]

Our Town was first performed at McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey on 22 January 1938. It next opened at the Wilbur Theater in Boston, Massachusetts on 25 January 1938. Its New York City debut was on 4 February 1938 at Henry Miller's Theatre, and later moved to the Morosco Theatre. The play was produced and directed by Jed Harris.[2] Wilder received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1938 for the work.[3] In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave."[4]