By Tanisha Naik
This year’s fall play is “Our Town” which is set to open Thursday night on November 7th. Our Town is about people in a small town called Grover’s Corners, in New Hampshire, circa 1907. It shows how human beings are mortal and that most folks don’t appreciate life while they live it.
I spoke with Mr. Decker, the US Fine Arts Teacher, to get some behind-the-scenes insights on the upcoming play.
“This play is an American Classic, some say it’s the Best American Play ever written,” Mr. Decker said. He chose this particular play because of its charming depiction of small-town life and its huge universal messages. “Everyone relates to this play in some way. It’s your town. It’s your high school crush. It’s your parents up there,” he said.
Thorton Wilder, the creator of this play, was very groundbreaking in his approach to playwriting. For example, in this play, it “pans in and out like a movie. It pans in to hear people’s thoughts, then pans way out to watch Earth spinning on its axis in the same scene,” Mr. Decker said.
Obviously, every play requires much practice and preparation. A typical rehearsal day starts when actors put on rehearsal clothes at 3:40, and then they go into physical and vocal warm-ups at 3:45. At 4:00, they work on moments in scenes, beat by beat, then actors take notes and make corrections, then they try the scenes again. At the end “moments become scenes, scenes become acts, and acts become the play,” he said. Improv work is also a key factor in exploring characters’ daily lives and relationships.
When I spoke with Mr. Decker, rehearsals had been going great. “We have a talented cast who appreciates the unique challenges presented,” he said. One of these unique challenges is that everything in the show is mimed and imaginary, meaning there are no props or objects and very little scenery. However, “the cast has been working with a mime instructor to improve specificity and accuracy,” he said.
The cast has also been working hard on honest realism, volume and diction, and listening and reacting. Mr. Decker is excited for folks to see the talented cast bring this story to life with only “their acting skills, mime work, and not much else,” he said.
His most memorable experience so far has been teaching senior Julia Wood how to properly feed imaginary chickens. They took her out back to the chicken coop behind the Community Center and let her feed the Lovett Chickens.
I also wanted to check in with three actors: Senior Gracie Galie, Junior Susan Googe, and Senior Michael Darville.
Susan plays Mrs. Webb who has two kids, Emily and Wally, and is very organized and well-kept.
For Susan, one aspect of her character that is challenging is that “she is a middle-aged woman who is married with 2 kids, so I have to work really hard to find a way for me to relate to that,” she said.
However, she is doing a great job locking down her character. As a part of acting, she has to answer all the basic questions about her character, like age, background, personality, and relationships. She always tries to learn her lines quickly “so I can really dive into what my character is feeling in each scene,” she said.
She is also working hard with the mime work. “I do a lot of cooking/cleaning in the show on stage, so I had to learn how to properly establish what I am doing,” she said.
She is looking forward to the audience seeing the scenes with the families because “I think the story represents a lot of common family dynamics that the audience can relate to,” she said.
Gracie plays the stage manager who narrates the whole show. For her, the audition process was quite nerve-wracking because “you don’t know what role you could get, but I think it’s always really fun to audition,” Gracie said.
For Gracie, her character is a really simple person, unlike other characters. “I realized that I really had to bring myself into the role and use my personality and just understand how I would do something,” she said.
Gracie’s character is in a different time period than the other characters which is “kind of hard to really understand when you’re kind of outside of the world of the other actors basically by myself,” she said.
The most fun part of rehearsals is the warmups that they do before rehearsal. She and other seniors have incorporated new fun ones to set the tone. “It’s good to be serious but still have fun,” she said. She is most excited for the audience to see this big wedding scene.
Michael plays Dot Gis who is the town doctor and the father of the girl. To get into character he did a lot of “substantiating, just reading a lot of plays, reading up on older literature,” he said.
The audition process was “pretty easy,” he said. He read three scenes during his audition and he got cast a couple of days later.
His favorite part has been the fun environment. “It fosters a lot of creative development,” he said. He’s most excited for the audience to see the wedding scene.
Mr. Decker loves all the scenes but his favorite is the Time Travel sequence.
“Nobody sees that one coming,” he said.
