Our Town Tickets | Schedule for 2024/2025 Events

Our Town

Three acts make up Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which premiered in 1938 and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama the same year. People consider the play a classic look at life in a small American town.

The play takes place in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, and the play is narrated by the Stage Manager, who takes the side stage and explains the play's proceedings. The audience learns more about the other characters through flashbacks, conversations, and direct monologues.

About Our Town

In the opening scene, the audience is introduced to Grover's Corners and the Stage Manager, who also serves as the play's narrator. The Stage Manager knows what all the characters think and do. Grover's Corners is a small town that will get its first car in a few more years. As the Stage Manager says, most families live and die in Grover's Corners.

The 1st act of the play demonstrates how people in Grover's Corners spend their days. The Gibbs family and the Webb family are introduced. Act One starts with a newsboy bringing newspapers, a milk delivery, Doc Gibbs heading out to work, and the Webb family eating breakfast. Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs talk after the kids leave for school. Emily watches George play baseball while George says nice things about a speech she gave at school.

In the play's second act, we learn that three years have passed. The morning starts the same way as the last act. However, we find that Emily and George are getting married today. The Stage Manager tells the audience what happened three years before the wedding: George and Emily fought about how their friendship had changed. After the fight, George took Emily to the drugstore for a soda, and they both accepted that they liked each other. Before the wedding, George and Emily get anxious about getting older and having to grow up.

The last act starts at a cemetery. Mrs. Gibbs and Wallace Webb are no more. Emily also died when giving birth. The still-alive characters prepare for Emily's funeral. Emily watches the funeral with Mrs. Gibbs from behind the grave. She wishes to turn back time to watch the life she had. Emily's twelve-year-old birthday is brought back by the Stage Manager. Emily looks after her family, but she can't handle it all. She returns to the cemetery, where the dead discuss life and how they don't fully know what it offers.