In the old DNA EpiCenter across the street from campus, rehearsals are well underway for this year’s first mainstage production: Thorton Wilder’s Our Town.
The nineteen-person cast, an unusually large number of actors for a play at Conn, rehearses weeknights and Sundays in just one room of the building, marking out their minimalist set with tape on the carpeted floor. The classic play will be performed this fall in the Tansill Theater on campus from October 21 to 24.
After an exciting and intense audition process earlier this month, the final cast was decided. The cast is both talented and diverse, spanning all grades and experience levels.
Julian Gordon ’14 is one of the few freshmen to be a part of the production, having received one of the play’s main roles in his first show at Conn. Julian says, “When the cast list went up I was actually ecstatic. Getting ‘George’ felt so good and it also made me thankful that I graduated from a high school with such a great theater program.”
Older cast members, like Talia Curtin ’13, are just as excited about Our Town, saying, “I love theater and am a theater major, so I definitely wanted to continue participating in shows at Conn. Our Town is a great play, and is the kind of show that can really hit home with a college community.”
Director Leah Lowe chose this show for the campus community this year, explaining, “I’ve loved this play since I first encountered it and I’ve never directed it before. It’s been a couple of years since the theater department directed a show with a large cast, so we felt like it was about time to do so.”
Auditions were held in the first week of classes. Students were asked to prepare a contemporary realistic dramatic monologue and later were given scenes to read in callbacks. Since then, rehearsals have moved efficiently. Professor Lowe said, “The rehearsal process is busy! We are working quickly and with a great deal of concentration. I am fortunate to have a talented, dedicated and good-natured cast and crew.”
Each week, the cast is given a specific schedule and certain actors are called each day, ranging from only a few people to the entirety of the cast. In rehearsals, Professor Lowe works one scene at a time, making sure that the actors understand how each scene should look and progress. On Sundays, the entire cast assembles to piece the scenes together, slowly completing a complicated three-act production in just a few weeks.
The play centers around the small town of Grovers Corners, a tight-knit community of colorful characters. The play exhibits the common, everyday lives of the members of the community.
However, Professor Lowe knows the play is much more than that. She explains, “Our Town is about living in a community with many different moving parts. It’s about being a part of something that is greater than the individual.” She goes on, “The play also addresses the everyday routines of ordinary life and the way that their predictability dulls our eyes to the extraordinary beauty and comfort these routines encompass.”
Mikey Harris ’11, one of the cast members of Our Town, agrees, “[The show] doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles and is just a play where we get to see the humanity of Americans. The main point of the play is that life is sacred and that you should recognize the beauty of it every single second.”
Harris goes on to describe how the play invokes an “immense sense of community, something that is extremely important here at Conn.” The cast knows that the issues portrayed in Our Town are similar to what students here deal with everyday.
Professor Lowe says, “I think that Wilder uses little Grovers Corners, New Hampshire as a stand-in for any town, any neighborhood, any group of people who are bound together by sharing the same space. So I hope that people will recognize their situation in the production’s depiction of Grovers Corners.”
Everyone involved in the production hopes that audience members feel this sense of community. Gordon says, “The audience should take away an overwhelming love for life. I know that since I read the play, I’ve tried to appreciate the things life has to offer.” The cast hopes that Our Town will prove to be a moving and meaningful production, and one not to be missed.
