Our Town, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, Colorado

Abstract

In his program note to the 2023 production of Our Town at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Center’s President and CEO Phillip Sneed suggests that the play’s central preoccupation is “what it means to be part of a community.” He sees this reflected both in the obvious sense, in that the play is an exploration of a particular community over the course of—and just after—a brief lifetime. But it is also true in a more subtle sense, as arts organizations such as the Arvada Center emerge slowly from the COVID-19 pandemic and embark on the effort to rebuild the communities that sustain them. Sneed (and Arvada Center artistic director Lynne Collins) picked Our Town as a vehicle for reigniting that spark of community, inviting audience members to once again “join with others in the communal experience of watching live theatre.”Director Geoffrey Kent—who also plays the Stage Manager—and his artistic team make several significant choices to reinforce both aspects of this theme of community (Kate Gleason served as assistant director). First, they have chosen to heighten the theatricality of an already highly theatrical work, thus doubling down on the type of experience that can only be had live. And second, their production foregrounds the way in which both the characters and the audience are members of the community of Grover’s Corners. Most of these choices succeed and combine to form a spare and lyrical, yet powerfully theatrical, production of Wilder’s most essential play.From the start, Kent and his team emphasized that this production would be a work of theater. The Black Box Theatre at the Arvada Center is a 200-seat space in the round. At the outset of the evening, rather than the Stage Manager entering onto a bare stage and setting the scene as in Wilder’s stage directions, this production began with the actors mingling among the audience as they entered. As curtain time approached, an actual stage manager (the stage manager was Christine Moore and the assistant stage manager was Melissa J. Michelson) wandered through, announcing five minutes to the actors, who gave back a “thank you, five.” There was no scenery—just a small electric organ next to one of the voms and a ghost light in the center of the stage (the set designer was Brian Mallgrave). The entire auditorium—stage and house—was brightly and generally lit (lighting design was by Jon Dunkle).As curtain time arrived, the cast gathered center stage in a circle around the ghost light to go through an abbreviated physical and vocal warm-up (Fig. 1). After a few minutes, they began singing Our Town’s signature hymn—“Blest Be the Tie that Binds”—on a communal “ooh” rather than singing the words (Emily Van Fleet, also playing Mrs. Gibbs, was musical director). When the hymn was finished, the Stage Manager leaped into action, ascending the three or four steps into one of the voms, beginning his opening monologue. As he discussed the impending dawn, he walked back down into the center of the circle. Telling the audience, “The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go,—doesn’t it?” (Collected Plays 149), he flipped the switch to turn off the ghost light, and the production began in earnest.Once the residents of Grover’s Corners began their day, another theatricalized aspect of the production revealed itself. With a few spare exceptions, the production utilized no props; instead, the actors mimed all of their stage business (the mime choreographer—also playing Mr. Webb—was Matt Zambrano). For certain pieces of business, offstage but still visible actors provided sound effects timed to the miming: when Mrs. Gibbs helped Mrs. Webb with her beans in Act 1, the actors mimed snapping beans and their compatriots offstage snapped in time to the miming. When Joe Crowell threw newspapers, company members slapped rolled-up scripts into their palms, so the audience could “hear” the papers landing on front stoops, and when the Stage Manager (as Mr. Morgan) made ice cream sodas for Emily and George in Act 2, an offstage actor vocalized fizzing noises as the Stage Manager pulled the tap of the soda fountain. The bits of mime that had accompanying sound effects were more noticeable, but ultimately more effective than the garden-variety miming of stage business (opening cabinets, pouring coffee, etc.). Some performers were better at the mime than others—Zambrano was unsurprisingly a standout—but it was a welcome reminder of the power and versatility of live theater.The minimalism in the props carried through to the rest of the set as well. Two small tables and four chairs formed the entirety of the Webb and Gibbs homes in Acts 1 and 2. Two benches did duty as the seating in the respective mothers’ gardens. Mr. Morgan’s soda counter was a long plank across the backs of two chairs. Professor Willard’s disquisition on the antediluvian history of Grover’s Corners was delivered with the aid of an artist’s easel with nothing on it. And when George and Emily discussed their math homework from their respective rooms, the actors stood on chairs in opposite-corner elevated voms. (Ironically, while the production eschewed the typical ladders for George and Emily’s windows, the production poster features the silhouette of a young woman standing on a ladder in front of a full moon, which speaks to the iconic power of Wilder’s image.)The production’s heightened theatricality emphasized its chosen theme of community. From the very first scene, the production physically demonstrated how intimately the residents of Grover’s Corners are involved in one another’s lives. While Wilder calls for the Webb and Gibbs breakfast tables to occupy the down-left and down-right corners of a proscenium stage, respectively, with the gardens facing each other toward center, Kent’s production placed the two breakfast tables literally side by side, center stage, separated by at most two inches. This meant that, for the intercut breakfast scene, it appeared that the two families sat at one large table together, rather than in separate houses—a foreshadowing of the literal joining of the families via Emily and George’s wedding in Act 2 (Fig. 2).The most interesting way in which the production emphasized community was in its attempts to make the audience feel like a part of the community of Grover’s Corners. This was most apparent in the production’s lighting design—or lack thereof. As Kent wrote in his director’s note, the production had “blessed few light cues,” and his team chose to keep the house lights up throughout the play to encourage the audience “to feel as though you are also a resident of our town because we all are.” Although the level of ambient light varied throughout the performance—the nighttime sequence of Act 1 and the entirety of Act 3 were noticeably dimmer than the rest—the house was lit throughout at just below the level of the stage. When the Stage Manager handed random audience members questions written on cards to ask Editor Webb in Act 1, it was not startling or surprising, as the audience already felt like members of the community.The costume design (by Meghan Anderson Doyle) further emphasized the connection between the audience and the actors. While there was a general early twentieth-century feel to the dresses and suits, the costumes strove for evocation rather than technical accuracy, and the simple lines downplayed the extent to which this was meant to seem like a “period” piece. And no effort was made to place the Stage Manager in a historically accurate period: Kent’s untucked white button-down shirt, jeans off the rack, glasses on a lanyard around his neck, long hair tied in a bun, and close-cropped beard would be more at home in a coffee shop in 2023 than in Mr. Morgan’s soda fountain in 1901.The casting of the production also showed an effort to reflect the community of Arvada and greater Denver. Mrs. Gibbs (Emily Van Fleet) and Mrs. Webb (Diana Dresser) were both played by white actors. Dr. Gibbs (Lavour Addison) was played by a Black actor, and for George (Teej Morgan-Arzola) the team cast an actor who appeared to be of blended heritage. Editor Webb (Matt Zambrano) was played by an actor of Latin descent, and Emily (Claylish Coldiron) also seemed a member of that community. These casting choices further closed the distance between Wilder’s world and ours, and they worked well.The performances were, on the whole, very strong. As the Stage Manager, Kent conveyed a warm, wry sensibility and visibly enjoyed being our guide through Grover’s Corners and Emily’s life. Particular standouts were the Gibbs and Webb parents, all four of whom found a loving if slightly world-weary gear that conveyed great caring, but also a wistful awareness that their children would soon grow up and leave them. All four parents were also up to the challenge of carrying most of the more comedic bits of the text; Zambrano’s delivery of Mr. Webb’s father’s advice to George on his wedding day in Act 2 was a particular standout. As Emily, Coldiron shifted adeptly between young girl and young woman, demonstrating a keen intelligence and steel as well as a deep reservoir of love for her family and for George. As George, Morgan-Arzola had a boundless energy and excitement for the future. The remainder of the company (Samantha Piel, Archer Rosenkrantz, Tresha Farris, Kate Gleason, Frank Oden, and Josh Robinson) ably filled out the world of Grover’s Corners, rising eagerly to the challenge, whether it was singing in the choir, making the offstage sound of a horse neighing, or appearing as a solemn mourner at Emily’s funeral. Kent’s direction focused on moving quickly and nimbly through the text, ensuring that the production never dragged.In Act 3, the staging worked to pull the audience fully into the world of the cemetery. While Wilder calls for the dead characters to be seated in three rows of chairs together right of center facing downstage, Kent’s production situated the primary four dead—Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Soames, Mr. Stimson, and Wally Webb—in chairs next to the front row of each of the four audience seating banks, facing in toward the stage. Then, as Emily was brought in by a parade of umbrella-bearing mourners, she ultimately sat down in a chair dead center. No audience member could effectively see all four dead characters, so as the dead spoke to Emily, it was almost as if we, too, were among the dead greeting our latest companion. Act 3 is the most abstract section of the play, and staging it in this way enhanced the disconnection between audience and narrative that is inherent in Wilder’s text. It was an effective choice.After Emily traveled back to her birthday and returned to the cemetery, the Stage Manager appeared directly upstage of her during her final colloquy with the dead, rolling the ghost light—idle next to the organ throughout the evening, but now lit once more—along with him. As he sent the audience off with a friendly, “Good night” (Collected Plays 209), he flipped off the ghost light, and we were plunged into darkness for the first time since the play began. In that moment, the heightened theatricality merged with the creative team’s work to build a community, and served as an emphatic conclusion to an excellent production.