The idea of the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder is to portray average, daily life and to keep it simple. I think it would do well as a special on a streaming platform like Netflix or Amazon. To maintain the simplicity, it would be filmed in an empty black box theater, the cast would be dressed in normal, casual street clothes, and, to keep true to the original, the set wouldn’t be made up of much more than two tables with a few chairs.
I would want to keep most of the script intact because...because I think it’s well-written, and some lines are just especially remarkable. But there are parts of it that could use a facelift. I don’t think a remix would need to complete modernize it, but I also don’t think keeping it set in 1901 would be the best choice for this adaptation. An ambiguous timeframe is just fine with me. We don’t have to figure out a way to include cell phones, but at least adjust it enough that the gender norms from the late ‘30s when Wilder originally wrote it are a little less cringe to a modern audience. For example, maybe the mothers could work, maybe one of the fathers is a homemaker, maybe it’s not just the women who go to choir rehearsal...
Now, what I would really love—and this is probably a terrible idea that would be a waste of funding and maybe no one would actually watch it—is if there were multiple renditions of the play. That it would be the same updated script, same theater, same costumes, but a different Director and cast, and perhaps even change the names of the characters. Maybe there’s an installment with a Timothy marrying a Jacob instead of an Emily marrying a George. (And maybe one version could go a little off-script and wouldn’t include a marriage in the second act but concludes that people don’t have to get married to have fulfilling lives.) It’s part indulgence for me, yes. I would love to see how different actors and directors interpret various scenes. I want to cast Neil Patrick Harris and Meryl Streep and Lin Manuel Miranda as the Stage Manager, and multiple versions means I CAN HAVE IT ALL. But I do also think this particular play lends itself well to that kind of redundancy.
For me, one of the biggest parts of the play is that it’s meant to reflect the most basic and mundane aspects of our lives to highlight that there is good in that. And it's supposed to be representative of all of us. What better way to emphasize that than doing it over and over and over again. It would show the same message no matter the race, gender, sexuality, country of origin, or ability of the cast. That we’re all human. We’re born, we grow up, many fall in love, some have kids, a bunch of good stuff happens, a bunch of not-so-good stuff happens, and we die. And we’re all just trying to find ways to enjoy and appreciate the life we have before it ends
hmm, I like a lot about this idea and I think I can see a way to almost make this feasible. I'm envisioning it live, like a First Night sort of thing (do towns still do that? lots of live performances that all happen on New Year's Eve?), but with the same play happening in different venues all simultaneously. There could be breaks between the scenes so that people could move between the performances and see what's different and what's the same and experience different actors and different interpretations of the same play. I think it could work! Processional theatre (where either the plays move to different audiences or where audiences move to different venues) is completely awesome and I can see this working well to bring your idea to life!
ReplyDeleteIf you did this on amazon or netflix, would there be multiple episodes to fit each performance? If you put this on one of those platforms, there could be the central play then flashbacks to alternative realities. Or like have one of the characters have a dream sequence. I have never seen Our Town, but the concept of the play sounds really interesting and I like how you would adapt it to fit a modern audience.
ReplyDeleteI think anytime you can create simplicity it's a powerful thing. I don't know if you've heard of a play called "Almost, Maine," but it's a WONDERFUL play about a little town in Maine and the simply, yet mythical things that can happen with simplicity. I think it's a difficult thing to write because playwrights/screenwriters always want to focus on the "meaty" characters (characters with huge arcs), but I truly believe that simple is often a more powerful way to tell a fantastic story!
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