Our Town (2015)

   This was a celebration of ACT’s inception — re-mounting our very first play for the 20th anniversary.  The company included six members of the original 1995 group (Gerry Gray, Wallena Higgins, Barbara Rhodenhizer, Blaine Hrabi, Greg Stapleton and Rob Thomson)

   Our Town is Thornton Wilder’s most famous work; it won him the Pulitzer Prize.  Even after three quarters of a century, it is still performed at least once a day somewhere in the world, in one of 30 languages.  Why? ... the play’s essential humanity: with gentle good humour it explores the universal by presenting the commonplace in everyday small-town life … and that community flavour meant kinship with our Prince Edward Island society.

   The play employed the novel method of having the ‘Stage Manager’ character as a narrator-commentator, speaking directly to the audience to tell about the town, and furnishing everything from stage props to sage commentary.  It works on an appeal to our imagination: with just the narration of the ‘Stage Manager’, some sound and lighting effects, mime, and the minimal set -- a few chairs and a couple of step-ladders -- two family homes and a main street come alive, and we experience the life-rituals of birth, marriage and death.