Lifelong appreciation for theater began with 'Our Town'

I was in eighth grade when the juniors of our high school staged "Our Town" as their class play. It was the first production I ever watched in a theater, and in some ways it's still the most meaningful.

Though I didn't realize it then, that simplistic three-act play by the masterful Thornton Wilder became a foundation upon which I would build a lifetime of theater appreciation. Its message to me - to appreciate every minute of life - was life-altering.

I watched Whitefish Theatre Co.'s rendition of "Our Town" last weekend and found myself swept back in time to that day in 1969 when I watched the upperclassmen in my school perform the play in our stuffy, aging school auditorium. I remembered exactly who played each part and what they were wearing.

For those of you not familiar with the play, the extraordinariness of it is that it so wonderfully captures the ordinariness of our lives - "the way we were in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying" - as the stage manager, the narrator of the play, tells the audience. Without fancy sets or props, "Our Town" tells the timeless story of a small town in New Hampshire a century ago.

The most heartfelt scene comes in the end, when Emily Gibbs, who has died in childbirth, looks back on the town after she's died. She asks to relive just one day of her life, but tearfully returns to the cemetery after she realizes, "Oh, Earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."

Simon Stimson, the alcoholic church organist, has also died and has a place in the cemetery to which Emily returns. His bitter realization is especially stirring: "Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those … of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years…"

A couple of years after I watched "Our Town" for the first time, I used Emily's emotional speech as my piece for the serious oral interpretation category in our school's declamation program. I think I made it to regionals that year.

I can still recite certain passages: "Good-bye to clocks ticking, and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up …"

"Our Town" also inspired me to take up theater in coming years, though my career as an actress was short-lived. I won the lead role in our junior-class play, a serious drama called "The Death and Life of Larry Benson." The best part was that the script called for me to kiss my long-lost son on the cheek, and I'd had a crush for years on the boy who played that part.

The next year I played a haughty well-to-do lady in a hillbilly play, and also got the part of Yenta in "Fiddler on the Roof."

And that was it. My acting days were over. But it was enough to mold my appreciation for the theater arts. Many of my college friends were theater majors, so I watched a lot of productions. Some were memorable; some weren't.

I've attended dozens of plays and musicals through the years, and made sure my children went with me on most occasions. I wanted them to be transformed by stage acting in the same way I had been.

"Our Town" is still my favorite, and I'll leave you with a quote from its author, who so eloquently relates the play's theme: "When God loves a creature he wants the creature to know the highest happiness and the deepest misery. He wants him to know all that being alive can bring. That is his best gift. There is no happiness save in understanding the whole."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.