![]() ![]() ![]() From that point forward, I was drawn into what felt like a set of theatrical experiments in which the director, actors, and I were exploring the idiosyncrasies of stage and screen. My attention was instantly called to the physical presence of these two actors and how, in real life, I had to physically turn my head to see both their faces. Two actors were suddenly much further apart than they seemed in the video. Photo Credit: Sue KesslerĪt first, it was difficult not to obsess over the accuracy of each individual actor’s movements in relation to the screen. It was a defining element of Soltanoff’s production. While many productions strongly resist imitating a filmed version of the play in question, Soltanoff had every actor lip syncing and moving in perfect unison with a video recording of the 1989 Lincoln Center production, which was projected behind the actors to create a powerful distancing effect. And so Soltanoff’s production makes us wonder: What might the fourth wall of the modern day be? What theatrical experience could be equivalently shocking so as to jolt the audience out of their seats in the same way that Our Town did in its day? Choices that were cardinal sins during Wilder’s time, such as having minimal set and breaking the fourth wall, are no longer the radical statements that they once were. ![]() It may have caught audience members off guard, then, when director Phil Soltanoff described the play in his program notes as “an edgy, innovative, classic.” However, the statement points to what is usually forgotten among audiences and theater artists alike: Our Town was revolutionary in its time. Its established place in the canon of American theater means it is both well known and, by unfortunate extension, over-performed. Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play and one of the most ubiquitous shows in American theater, hardly needs an introduction. Overlapping Presences in Soltanoff’s Our Town ![]()
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