My introduction to Thornton Wilder was the same as that of many teens growing up in the 1950s-1960s. It was limited to musicals and theatrical performances brought to film and chosen by schools and local theater groups, thought to be enticing to the general public. My primary experiences came from musicals staged by a theatrical group at my church, St. Giles Episcopal, in Upper Darby. On occasion I would have minor roles in South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, but had no inclination to pursue serious drama.
It was only later in my teens that I saw a school production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder, a three-act play set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. The play explored relationships between two families living in the town between 1901 and 1913.
The set was minimal, the characters were everyday people, and the play addressed the themes of love, community, struggles and the passage of time, I had not previously encountered. At times, the actors broke from their roles and explained the actions of the other members of the cast to the audience.
Having thoroughly enjoyed Our Town, I searched for other Wilder works and came across his play titled The Skin of Our Teeth which was radically different from Our Town, at least to me and breaking all the conventions of theater of its time: 1942.
The Skin of our Teeth mixed together a war, similar to the one the U.S. was waging at the time in Europe and Japan, with extinct creatures like the woolly mammoth, along with the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and an impending ice age. I could only compare it to, in recent years, watching the absurd comedy, Everything Everywhere All at Once...but Wilder’s play predated the film by 80 years.
I later realized, while reading the plays of Edward Albee, how influenced the younger playwright must have been by Wilder’s earlier work. And also how Wilder, himself, was inspired by James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake, published just a few years prior to the premiere of Wilder’s play.
While Joyce’s work was complex and difficult to comprehend, Wilder’s was darkly humorous and more relatable, keeping viewers engaged despite bewilderment. After reading Edward Albee’s playTiny Alice, a few years later, I realized that I’d been prepared for Albee’s surprises and radical twist and turns by Wilder, who purposely meant to boggle the minds of his audience as well as enlighten them.
During his lifetime, Thornton Wilder won three Pulitzer Prizes, for his dramas, Our Town and the The Skin of Our Teeth, and a third for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey.