Review: Dallas Theater Center’s “Our Town”

**Originally published in the Thornton Wilder Journal, Vol. 3 - No. 1, 2022; Pennsylvania State University Press**

Directed by Tatiana Pandiani

Kalita Humphreys Theater, Dallas Theater Center

Dallas, Texas

27 January 2022-20 February 2022

Reviewed by Haas Regen

Thornton Wilder was a polyglot, world traveler, and expert translator. His 1932 adaptation of André Obey’s Le viol de Lucrèce starred Katharine Cornell at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre. Five years later, he turned William Archer’s stodgy translation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House into a major vehicle for Ruth Gordon. At the request of Jean-Paul Sartre, he translated Morts sans sépulture, which was presented off-Broadway as The Victors at the New Stages Theatre in 1948. Toward the end of his career, Wilder transformed two of his plays into opera libretti: Paul Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner and Louise Talma’s The Alcestiad premiered in Germany in 1961 and 1962, respectively. In 2009, the American Academy of Arts and Letters established the Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.

It is safe to assume that Wilder would have approved of or even applauded the first multilingual version of his best-known play, Our Town. Directed by Michel Hausmann, the production was billed as Thornton Wilder’s Our Town: A Multilingual World Premiere and opened at Miami New Drama’s Colony Theatre in Miami Beach, Florida, on 26 October 2017. The actors spoke in English, Spanish, and Creole—“the first time the Wilder Estate has allowed changes to the play’s text” (“Our Town”)—and featured passages translated by Nilo Cruz and Jeff Augustin.

Dallas Theater Center was the second regional theater to stage Cruz and Augustin’s version. Because Creole is not widely spoken in Dallas, the creative team opted to remove it. The revised title was therefore more distinctive: Our Town / Nuestro Pueblo. Tatiana Pandiani, who served as the Associate Director of the Miami New Drama production, directed the Dallas premiere at the Kalita Humphreys Theater. Pandiani’s production did not include any of the actors from the Miami Beach cast. Instead, it showcased members of DTC’s Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company: Liz Mikel as the Stage Manager, Christina Austin Lopez as Emily Webb, Zachary J. Willis as George Gibbs, Alex Organ as Simon Stimson, Bob Hess as Joe Stoddard, and Molly Searcy as Mrs. Soames.

In keeping with the vision of the Miami Beach production, Pandiani employed color- conscious casting: Mr.(/Sr.) Charles (Carlos) Webb, his wife Myrtle, and their children, Emily (Emilia) and Wally, were portrayed by Latinx actors; Dr. Frank Gibbs, his wife Julia, and their children, George and Rebecca, were portrayed by Black actors. English supertitles were projected onto two screens, house right and left, whenever Spanish dialogue was spoken. DTC’s production took this concept of inclusivity a step further by casting a Black actress, Liz Mikel, as the Stage Manager. A veteran performer of stage and screen, Mikel was an alert and sharp-witted narrator, readily convincing as an expert raconteur, mystical soothsayer, and universal citizen of Grover’s Corners. Dressed in a denim jumpsuit and work boots, she commanded the stage with an effortless and virtuosic knack for Wilder’s metatheatrical style (Fig. 1). In response to Emily’s query as to whether human beings “ever realize life while they live it,” Mikel’s reaction was at once straightforward and stirring: “The saints and poets, maybe—they do some” (Collected Plays 207). From the beginning, she spoke from the heart, directly to the people of Dallas.

FIG 1 The Stage Manager (Liz Mikel) and the cast of the Dallas Theater Center production of *Our Town*. Photo Credit: Imani Thomas.

In his book Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century, scholar and critic Howard Sherman observes, “While the population of Grover’s Corners in the early 1900s would likely have been predominantly, if not entirely, white, productions of the play have been, by dint of the show’s international popularity, performed by actors of every race and ethnicity,” adding that “there is a place for everyone in the community Thornton Wilder created.” Moreover, “the gender construct of Our Town began to be altered in the early 1970s, as productions started to feature women playing the Stage Manager.” Remarkably, Ginger Rogers undertook the role at the Ida Green Communication Center at Austin College in 1972. Four years later, Geraldine Fitzgerald literally followed in Wilder’s footsteps when she performed the role at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (Sherman 16, 17). With respect to Mikel, a Black female Stage Manager is not without precedent; I saw the great Barbara Meek play the enigmatic chronicler at Trinity Repertory in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2007.

As with any good production of Our Town, the cast worked together as a troupe: all company members inhabited the same world, actively listened, and at all times appeared involved in the proceedings. When not speaking, they shared duties as stagehands or choir singers or took part in voice or foley effects. Among the supporting players, several performances warranted special attention: Ivan Jasso, who skillfully doubled as Professor Willard and a bilingual Howie Newsome; Alex Organ, whose Simon Stimson had the ideal blend of acrimony and ennui; and Molly Searcy, hilarious and touching as Mrs. Soames. As Sra. Webb, Gigi Cervantes was another standout. She delivered an impassioned, almost frenetic reading of her wedding “impression”—in Spanish—as Cesar Anguiano played a tender solo-guitar rendition of Handel’s “Largo” (“Ombra mai fù,” from the opera Serse).

The rest of the wedding ceremony—and its unexpected “reception”—made this Our Town exceptional (Fig. 2). In striking and specific ways, Pandiani embraced both Latin American and African American traditions: mothers of the bride and groom placed a beaded lasso (el lazo) on the couple; Emilia wore an elegant red and white, huipil-inspired dress along with a lace veil and flower crown; and, before their departure, the newlyweds “jumped the broomstick.” The Stage Manager then called for an intermission, but the cast did not leave the stage. Deviating from Wilder’s script, Pandiani and music director Jesse Fry crafted a delightful wedding reception that kicked off with Dallas native Domingo “Sam the Sham” Samudio’s “Wooly Bully.” As audience members exited and re-entered the auditorium, Anguiano and cast members danced and performed Spanish-language songs: “Sabor a Mi,” “De Colores,” and “Mi Arból Y Yo,” etc.

FIG 2 Emilia (Christina Austin), George (Austin Lopez), and the Stage Manager (Liz Mikel) in the Act 2 wedding scene of the Dallas Theater Center production of *Our Town*. Photo Credit: Imani Thomas.

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.

HAAS REGEN studied Theatre at Vanderbilt University and received his MFA in Acting from Brown University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Works Cited

“Dallas Asian Culture, Sites and Facts.” Visit Dallas. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://www.visitdallas.com/about/diverse-dallas/-asian.html.

Dolen, Christine. “‘Our Town’ Exquisitely Re-Imagined by Miami New Drama.” Artburst, 22
Feb. 2018. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://www.artburstmiami.com/film-theater-articles/our-town-exquisitely- re-imagined-by-miami-new-drama.

Hausmann, Michel. “Introduction.” Thornton Wilder’s Our Town: Featuring Translated Passages by Nilo Cruz and Jeff Augustin. New York: Samuel French, 2020. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://www.concordtheatricals.com/s/93285/our-town-multilingual.

“Kalita Humphreys Theater.” Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://franklloydwright.org/site/kalita-humphreys-theater/.

Niven, Penelope. Thornton Wilder: A Life. New York: HarperCollins, 2012. Print. “Our Town.” Miami New Drama. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://miaminewdrama.org/show/our-town.

Rabinowitz, Chloe. “James Vincent Meredith, Priscilla Lopez & More to Star in The Skin of Our Teeth.” Broadway World, 22 Feb. 2022. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/James-Vincent-Meredith-Priscilla-Lopez-More-to-Star-in-THE- SKIN-OF-OUR-TEETH-20220222.

Sherman, Howard. Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century. London: Methuen, 2021. Print.

“Theater Un-Paused––Our Town Opens in Seoul.” Thornton Wilder, The Wilder Family LLC,
24 June 2020. Web. 29 Mar. 2022. https://www.thorntonwilder.com/blog/2020/6/22/social-distanced-our- town-happening-in-seoul.

Wilder, Thornton. Collected Plays & Writings on Theater. Ed. J. D. McClatchy. New York: Library of America, 2007. Print.