Our Town is an exceptional play in that it has a seemingly omniscient narrator in the person of the character called the Stage Manager. He tells the audience about the past, present and future. In the opening act the town is just starting to wake up and some of the early risers are going about their daily routines. The Stage Manager tells the audience:
The First Act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn.
One of the routines is seen when Joe Crowell, Jr. comes around delivering the newspaper called Sentinel. He is an eleven-year-old boy who is "hurling imaginary newspapers into doorways." In this play there are few settings or props, and a lot of the actions are imaginary ones. The State Manager shows his omniscience by telling the audience that World War I broke out and Joe Crowell died in France. The war would have broken out about fourteen years later, but America would not have gotten into it until 1917, when Woodrow Wilson was President. Joe Crowell would have been around twenty-six.
Another routine event is the appearance of Howie Newsome delivering the milk. He is still using a horse-drawn wagon in those days. His part of his routine is described in the stage directions.
Howie Newsome, about thirty, in overalls, comes along Main Street from the left, walking beside an invisible horse and wagon and carrying an imaginary rack with milk bottles. The sound of clinking milk bottles is heard.
Howie's horse and wagon are imaginary, and he is delivering imaginary milk bottles held in an imaginary rack. The audience soon gets accustomed to the unusual production technique which requires their own participation through their imaginations. Both the delivery of the small-town newspaper and the delivery of the morning milk are intended to show the simplicity and uneventfulness of life in this little New Hampshire town called Grover's Corners, population 2,642.
No comments:
Post a Comment