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Theatre Response - Our Town by Thornton Wilder

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The play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, takes place in Gover's Corner, New Hampshire and is a small American town where every one knew each other. The play is separated into three acts with the first act being about daily life, second act about marriage and third act about death. The theatrical experience of our town reveals that life is transient through the live performance elements of acting, lighting, and set design. The actors in the play focused a lot on gesture movements of daily life and how certain things looked. Since the play doesn't have much scenery and actual props for the actors to work with, this forced the actors to closely analyze beforehand how preparing breakfast with an imaginary kitchen would look like so that audiences would know exactly what the actors are doing when performing. The careful selections of how certain things should look made me realize how everyday life looked like and made me realize that daily life is a repetition of the same gestures and routines. The play is enhanced by the lighting choices. The theatre space was filled with tiny light bulbs across the ceiling, which made it like the sky of Governor's Corner. The flickering lights made the town warm and very peaceful. In Act I when George and Emily were doing homework in their own room, the moon shined through the windows and onto Emily's face. This scene gave a really romantic feeling and made me feel like time should be frozen this particular moment so that we can enjoy the beauty of everyday life. A particular scene that I remembered the most was in ending of Act III. When Emily was saying her last good bye to Grover's Corner before she returned back to the cemetery, the light dimmed and the stars (tiny light bulbs) start to shine. The ending where the stars were gradually blinking throughout the stage made me connect to Grover's Corner just as the characters did. The memories, and liveliness that occurred there seemed so quick and yet so et

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