Performances

Past Events

Performance (College): Festival of Short Plays 2013: Thornton Wilder

March 15, 2013 until March 17, 2013, Simpson College Theatre, Indianola, IA

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An examination of the work and theories of one of the most prolific and influential American writers, of the 20th century.

Leviathan
– After a night of destruction, a prince is left alone at sea to face his worst nightmare, a mermaid that wants to steal his soul.

Love and How to Cure It
– Love is a complicated emotion and experience for humans. Finding and retaining it is hard and yet it is extrememly easy to lose. No matter the age, the hold of love on a person is difficult to cure. Thornton Wilder opens up the question of whether or not a person can be cured of love.

The Angel That Troubled the Waters
– As humans we can suffer from physical pain, but also mental pain and depression. Sometimes our emotional baggage can seem too much to carry. In The Angel That Troubled the Waters, Thornton Wilder emphasizes the importance of all of our experiences, the good and the bad. These experiences make us who we are.

Such Things Only Happen In Books
– There is a poor author searching for a plot and he cannot seem to find it. He is surrounded by a wife having an affair with the debonair town doctor, a maid sheltering her fugitive brother, and a murderer who returns to the scene of the crime. Too bad books and plays are not reflective of life.

Mozart and the Grey Steward
– The musical genius is struggling with writing his greatest piece yet! However, will he get to finish it?

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came
– Have you ever thought about what your life will be worth at the end? When you get to the end of your road will you have done anything great or important? How will you be remembered? In Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came Wilder asks these questions and challenges you to live like there is no tomorrow.

Further event details can be found on the Festival of Short Plays 2013 page of the Simpson College website.

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Performance: Our Town

March 7, 2013 until April 26, 2013, Apollo Theatre Company, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom

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Set in the small town of Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire, Our Town is Thornton Wilder’s classic tale of American life in the early 20th Century. A story about ordinary citizens and their everyday lives, the play takes us through twelve years in the story of the town, and centres around two families and their experiences of life, love and loss.

Apollo Theatre Company presents this exciting new production celebrating the classic play’s 75th anniversary. For more information, please visit the Our Town page on the Apollo Theatre Company website

Apollo Theatre Company is a professional theatre company based in Guildford, Surrey, in the South East of England, and aim to produce brand new productions of classic plays.

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Benefit: Actors Fund Our Town Reading

March 4, 2013, Gerald W Lynch Theater, John Jay College, New York, NY

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On Monday, March 4th, the Actors Fund will host a one-night-only benefit reading of Our Town in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the play’s premiere on Broadway.

Directed by Peter Flynn, the all-start cast includes S. Epatha Merkerson, Blythe Danner and B.D. Wong as the Stage Manager, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Adriane Lenox, Martin Moran, Leslie Odom Jr., Rebecca Luker, Julia Murney, Howard McGillin, Jose Llana, Jerry Dixon, Wally Dunn, Philip Hoffman and Tyrah Skye Odoms.

Described by Edward Albee as “…the greatest American play ever written,” Our Town won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Tappan Wilder, nephew and literary executor of the playwright stated, “My uncle loved actors–he was an actor himself, you know–and he was mighty proud to have written a popular large-cast play that provided his fellows with so many jobs! What a great pleasure it is to partner with The Actors Fund, which Thornton Wilder supported throughout his life, on the occasion of a major milestone in the history of his most famous work.”

Further details can be found by visiting the The Actors Fund Our Town webpage.

About The Actors Fund
The Actors Fund is a nationwide human services organization that helps all professionals in performing arts and entertainment. The Fund is a safety net, providing programs and services for those who are in need, crisis or transition. Visit The Actors Fund website to learn more.

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Performance (College): The Skin of Our Teeth

February 14, 2013 until February 16, 2013, American University Arts, Washington, DC

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The play follows the saga of an American family’s survival in the face of incredible obstacles: the ice age, fratricide, adultery, the great flood, and war. The story highlights the strength and endurance of the American family as they persevere through life’s extraordinary challenges.

The Skin of Our Teeth won Thornton Wilder his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1942, following his previous win for Our Town in 1938.

The play’s production will be supplemented by an Outreach Project, which will reinforce the universality of the play’s themes. The face and make up of the modern American family has changed dramatically since 1942, and the Outreach Project endeavors to connect Wilder’s view of the American family to the reality of families today. The Outreach Project will also partner with local organizations that support families.

Produced in conjunction with the 75th anniversary celebration of Our Town at Ford’s Theatre, the cast of The Skin of Our Teeth will also perform The Long Christmas Dinner, one of Wilder’s short plays, at the Ford’s Theatre on Monday, February 11, 2013.

For more information about the production, please visit The Skin of Our Teeth Greenberg Theatre event listing on the American University website.

Click here for further details about the cast’s performance of The Long Christmas Dinner

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Performance: Our Town 75th Anniversary Production

January 25, 2013 until February 24, 2013, Ford's Theatre, Washington, DC

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Set in the serene New England town of Grover’s Corners, Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama presents a timeless commentary on the transience of human existence. Teenagers George and Emily meet, fall in love, marry—and suffer the slings and arrows of everyday life. Wilder transforms their ordinary story into a poignant and captivating exploration of mortality and the interconnectivity of human beings. Stephen Rayne (The Heavens Are Hung In Black, Sabrina Fair and Parade) returns to direct this quintessential piece of American theater in celebration of the play’s 75th-anniversary year.

Ticket Sales
Pre-Sale: August 6, 2012, at 10 a.m.
Public Sale: August 20, 2012, at 10 a.m.

For more, please visit the Ford’s Theatre Our Town event listing on their website.

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Performance: Our Town

December 7, 2012 until January 26, 2013, Huntington Theatre Company, Boston, MA

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Visionary director and MacArthur “Genius” David Cromer brings his groundbreaking and critically acclaimed new version of the beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town to the Huntington. In 1901 Grover’s Corners, George and Emily fall in love, marry, and live out their lives as one New England town becomes a microcosm of everyday life. An Off Broadway smash playing for more than 600 performances, this wonderfully intimate staging marks the Huntington’s first production in the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA.

“Wilder’s play mines the depths of our relationship to home and community, and so I find it fitting and deeply satisfying that in addition to directing and reprising his role as the Stage Manager, David will be engaging a company of actors comprised of Boston’s best talent alongside company members from his original Barrow Street production.” — Artistic Director Peter DuBois

For more, please visit Huntington Theatre Company’s David Cromer’s Our Town event listing on their website

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Performance: The Matchmaker

December 7, 2012 until December 11, 2012, The Actor's Company Theatre, New York, NY

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Horace Vandergelder, an irascible, penny-pinching store owner, plans to marry, but the woman he has chosen may not be the best one for him. Leave to the imperturbable, unpredictable, and adventure-loving matchmaker, Dolly Levi, to straighten it all out. With mistaken identities, near misses, botched plans, characters hidden in closets, and men disguised as women, this time-honored comedy leaves everyone happy and just a little smarter.

For more, please visit The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) event listing for The Matchmaker on on their website.

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Performance: 4 One-Act Plays

November 2, 2012 until December 10, 2012, Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley, CA

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Wilder Times: 4 One-Act Plays by Thornton Wilder

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright, and former Berkeley resident, Thornton Wilder, was an accomplished master of the short play form, specifically creating works to be staged in thrust spaces, like Aurora’s. Founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to direct this program of four of Wilder’s greatest short works, including The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden (1931), which features the first appearance of Wilder’s narrating Stage Manager character (seen later in his best known play, Our Town), and The Long Christmas Dinner (1931), perhaps Wilder’s most famous one-act, in which he breaks the boundaries of time as we measure it, following 90 years of one extended family’s holiday dinners. The evening will also include two selections from Wilder’s The Ages of Man series, Infancy and Childhood.

For more, please visit the Wilder Times area on the Aurora Theatre Company’s website.

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