Our Town

Simon Stimson

Choir master, alcoholic, hung himself.

Howie Newsome

The milkman who guides a seventeen-year-old horse named Bessie. Howie appears during Emily's return to the past in the last act.

Why does the Stage Manager include a copy of Our Town among the cornerstone items, and what will it reveal?

The real life of the town.

Joe Crowell Jr.

The town paper boy. He dies in World War I. He was the smarest kid at M.I.T.

How do Emily and George feel before the wedding?

They are reluctant and do not want to grow up.

Why, according to the Stage Manager, does he present the scene that takes place just after the high school election?

To show the connection between George and Emily.

How many years passed between Act 2 and Act 3?

9

The Stage Manager

A character who is at once inside and apart from the action of the play. He is omniscient:all knowing. He moves through time. He is the modern version of a choragos.

Mrs. Soames

A gossipy woman who sings in the choir along with Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs. she appears in the group of dead souls in Act III. One of the few townspeople we meet outside of the Webb and Gibbs families, she offers a sense of the interrelated nature of the lives of the citizens of Grover's Corners.

Explain the parallels the Stage Manager draws between the response of the dead and living.

A hill is a beautiful place and something is eternal. Dead is a moral loss.

Jane Crofut

A letter was sent to Jane Crofut by her minister because she was sick. It was addressed: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God. The address represented that everything and everyone lives in God's mind.

Professor Willard

A professor at the State University who gives the audience a report on Grover's Corners. This character appears once and then disappears. His role in the play is to interact with the audience and to inform theatergoers of the specifics of life in Grover's Corners. His reference to Native Americans reflects Wilder's understanding that the European ancestors of the current population in Grover's Corners replaced and extinguished the existing Native American populations.

Why does Emily pick her 12th birthday?

Because she thighs it was unimportant. George is involved since he gives her postcards.

Compare and contrast the brief appearances of the paperboy and milkmen in Act 1.

Course of the town both do their jobs and nothing really changes.

Act 1 Theme

Daily life, day to day routines of the two families and how they are familiar.

Act 3 Theme

Death. Emily dies from childbirth. Showed them in chairs (gravestones) ties between living and dead.

How does Emily feel towards the living?

Distant

Describe the nature of the advice that Mr. Webb gives George.

Do the opposite of what his father told him. Don't be a boss or keep money away.

Mr. Webb

Emily's father and the publisher and editor of the Grover's Corners Sentinel. Tells George how to not treat his daughter and convinces Emily to marry George.

Mrs. Webb

Emily's mother and Mr. Webb's wife. At first a no-nonsense woman who does not cry on the morning of her daughter's marriage, she later shows her innocent and caring nature, worrying during the wedding that she has not taught her daughter enough about marriage.

What do we learn is about to happen from Howie Newsome's conversations with various characters at the opening of the act?

George Gibbs is quitting baseball to get married to Emily.

In the scene showing how their love began, what does Emilys frank criticism of George reveal about each of them?

George takes the criticism well and apologizes. Realizes that he shouldn't go to college because he will become to self absorbed and change more.

Dr. Gibbs

George's and Rebecca's father and the town doctor. he is also a Civil War expert. He delivers twins, travels to Gettsburg every 2 years.

Rebecca Gibbs

George's younger sister who tells of a strangely addressed letter.

Setting

Grover's Corners, NH 1901-1913

Cite an examples from the plays first act in which the Stage Manager becomes a player of minor parts.

He voiced Mrs. Forest who George bumped into in the street and interacted directly with them.

"Blessed be the tie the binds"

In all 3 acts. Act 1: ties on the town people and humanity. Act 2: Emily and George ties on marriage tie the knot. Act 3: ties with the living and dead.

Act 2 Starts on?

July 7, 1904. High School comcement. Before Dawn 545.

When were George and Emily elected to high school class offices, and what offices did they hold?

Junior year. George was the president while Emily was the secretary/treasurer.

What does the audience learn from the long opening speech of the Stage Manager?

Location and background about the play, May 7th 1901.

Mrs. Soames' says the wedding is:

Lovely and beautiful she means this lightly.

Act 2 Theme

Marriage

George Gibbs

Marries Emily Webb. Well liked/Popular in school becuadro becomes the class president. A very talented baseball player but quits so he can be with Emily and gets a job as a farmer (takes over his uncles farm).

Mrs. Gibbs

Mother of George and Rebecca, died of pneumonia when she visits her daughter in OH. Has dreams of going to Paris, France.

What do we learn from Craig and Stoddard?

Mrs. Gibbs (pneumonia) and Simon (suicide)

Does the appearance of George, falling at Emily's feet support Stimson or Mrs. Gibbs?

Mrs. Gibbs- George recognizes the value of time spent on earth.

What is Mrs. Webb's husband interested in?

Napoleonic History

As indicted in the opening stage directions, how are the cemetery and the dead represented on stage as Act 3 begins?

Represented by seats and the dead are sitting in the chairs.

What is the Stage Manager doing at the beginning of the play, as the audience arrives?

Setting the scene by adding tables and chairs as the only scenery. Tells the audience about when and where the scene takes place. Brings basic things out.

Give possible reasons for the playwrights intermingling the family sciences, shifting focus from one side of the stage to another as the families engage in similar activities.

Shows the universally of man and simultaneous nature of life.

Rather early in the first act it becomes clear that the playwright wishes to focus on the Gibbs and Webb households. Point out all the difference of the two families, (particularly their professions and family members) and their similarities.

Similar Two kids Govers Corners Same block Difference Rebecca and Georgia Wally and Emily Mr Webb editor

Wally Webb

Son of Mr. and Mrs. Webb. Brother to Emily. Dies on a camping trip to North Conway. His Appendix Burst.

What is the year when Act 3 opens?

Summer of 1913

Emily Webb (Gibbs)

The Webbs' intelligent and responsible daughter, she is the secretary and treasurer in junior year, joins the two major families when she marries George Gibbs, and dies later during childbirth.

Who wrote Our Town?

Thornton Wilder in 1937

What, according to the Stage Manager, are the items to be placed in the new bank's cornerstone, to be opened in a thousand years, and what would they reveal to the future about the town and country?

Time capsule with the N.Y. times, Mr. Webb Sentinel Bible, Constitution, Shakespeare and Our Town.

What does the Stage Manager do before telling the audience to go home and rest?

Wind his watch

Themes

• The universality of man; the idea that all human beings share certain elements of life. • The simultaneous nature of life; that past, present and future mingle together. • One thing that ALL people share is death and the thread of the eternal. • Appreciate every moment.