Intermission revelry was a vital component of this Our Town, boldly manifesting the promise of a multicultural theatrical experience. The idea, however, cannot be attributed wholly to Pandiani: Miami New Drama’s Artistic Director, Michel Hausmann, incorporated this creative fancy into his production in 2017. In a review from Artburst Miami, Christine Dolen reported, “Hausmann and musical director Salomon Lerner . . . invite the audience onstage to have a wedding reception dance party with the cast in the break between the second and third acts.” Hausmann was neither acknowledged nor given special thanks in the Dallas production’s program.
Nevertheless, Pandiani’s interpretation offered valuable insights. Three compelling moments in the play’s first act justified making “changes to the play’s text” and integrating bilingual characters into Grover’s Corners. Mrs. Gibbs’s line to Sra. Webb, “Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to” (Collected Plays 118), came across as a profoundly moving display of friendship and mutual affection. When Professor Willard referred to New Hampshire’s “English brachiocephalic blue-eyed stock,” Mikel’s Stage Manager took full advantage of Wilder’s deliberate punctuation, using the accompanying ellipsis to indicate her disapproval. Jasso’s Professor then attached the footnote “for the most part” (160). Yet more powerful was Cesar Anguiano as the Belligerent Man who, in Spanish, asked Editor Webb, “Is there no one in town aware of social injustice and industrial inequality?” (161). David Lugo’s sympathetic reply, also in Spanish, resonated as thoroughly modern, revealing new possibilities for Our Town and how we do theater in America today.
The Kalita Humphreys Theater—better known to Dallasites as “The Historic Kalita Theater”—was the perfect venue for Our Town. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s website, the building is one of Wright’s last completed projects and “the only theater design he would see realized.” The architect’s vision was avant-garde in both design and principle: “Wright maintained that the ‘New Theater’ should discard the traditional proscenium frame in order to join actors and audience in one unified space” (“Kalita Humphreys Theater”). Pandiani made full use of this thrust and open stage: Mikel interacted with the audience from the sides of the house and even from one of the aisles. Likewise, Editor Webb seamlessly fielded questions from the Woman in the Balcony and the Lady in the Box. Scenic designers Christopher and Justin Swader provided just the right amount of clutter, devising a milieu somewhere between backstage and onstage, rehearsal and performance. Yuki Nakase Link’s lighting design complemented their work beautifully. Focusing chiefly on the Kalita’s fabulous upstage wall, she found frequent opportunities for nuance; household lamps brightened and dimmed at key intervals, subtly synthesizing other design elements to create the precise atmosphere Wilder calls for in his stage directions.
In his introduction to the acting edition of the multilingual Our Town, Hausmann writes:
This is not merely a story about life in small-town America, in the same way that his The Bridge of San Luis Rey isn’t merely about life in Colonial Peru. . . . Miami New Drama’s 2017 multilingual production of Our Town set out to expand on the universality of Mr. Wilder’s work. In this version, the residents of Grover’s Corners look and sound like the people of my acquired hometown of Miami, and indeed of many multicultural and multilingual cities in America. The production’s success was in depicting a community that truly looked like Our Town. A community of immigrants, divided by language but united by the shared condition of being alive. A modern-day Grover’s Corners, yes, but, more than ever, a quintessentially American town. (Hausmann)
So, did DTC’s production depict what Dallas—or any multicultural city—looks like? Indeed, it came closer than a monoracial, monolingual production could have. Still, concerns linger. After Pandiani switched Augustin’s Creole passages back to the original Wilder, a hole was left unfilled. Should another language have taken its place? According to the tourism website VisitDallas.com, some 300,000 Asians live in North Texas, with “more than 100 Korean churches and approximately 40 Chinese churches located in the Dallas area; 14 Buddhist Centers in the Dallas area serve Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, and other ethnic communities” (“Dallas Asian Culture”). No translator? No problem: The Noel Theater in Seoul, Korea, presented Our Town in June 2020 during the height of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic (“Theater Un-Paused”). Picture it: an intoxicated Simon Stimson alternating between Korean and English as he lectures the choir; Man and Woman Among the Dead communicating, albeit briefly, in Thai; the Baseball Players pestering George in Chinese.
Would such seemingly insignificant changes be genuinely impactful? What more should be done to ensure that all community members feel seen and heard? As the American theater explores larger issues pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we may uncover more blind spots, leading to more confusion and frustration. Are industry leaders willing to take risks, learn hard lessons, and continue experimenting? What about critics and audiences? Broadway World recently announced that Obie Award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will “contribute additional material” for Lileana Blain-Cruz’s upcoming The Skin of Our Teeth at Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont Theater (Rabinowitz). It remains to be seen whether Jacobs-Jenkins’s additions will constitute a new acting edition of that play.
Hausmann and his translators left a critical note in their acting edition: “In the Miami New Drama production, we projected English supertitles when characters spoke in Spanish or Haitian Creole. Were we to do it again, we would probably remove the language barrier entirely by translating the English into the other two languages. . . . It’s now in your hands to do as you see fit for your community” (Hausmann). DTC did not heed their advice. As a compromise, performances on 5 and 6 February incorporated live simultaneous translation to audience members via headphones—a first for DTC. (It is worth mentioning that the recent Spielberg- Kushner film of West Side Story has no subtitles at all.)
During his freshman year at Oberlin College, Wilder won a ten-dollar prize for his essay “The Language of Emotion in Shakespeare.” In it, he wrote, “We have lost a living, expressive speech. . . . Great plays need great, but natural language” (qtd. in Niven 101). Wilder later claimed that he “began writing one-act plays that tried to capture not verisimilitude but reality” (Collected Plays 685). In Our Town, verisimilitude is intentionally unattainable: Joe Crowell, Jr. hurls “imaginary newspapers,” Mrs. Gibbs starts a fire in an invisible stove (152), and the Stage Manager tells us when someone is going to die before it happens (151-52, 153). For a Warren, Webb, Stoddard, or Soames, what does it matter if their neighbor is a non-native English speaker? Denizens of Grover’s Corners have something for which we are always searching: authenticity. They converse in a colloquial speech that transcends time and space, and the setting––here and now, wherever big-spirited actors can find one another––makes Our Town perpetually relevant. On everyman’s Main Street, Bessie keeps trotting, The Sentinel stays in circulation, and Morgan’s drugstore forever serves strawberry ice-cream sodas. Our Town— Nuestro Pueblo, Notre Petite Ville, Unsere Kleine Stadt—means home.