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The cast of the upcoming Broadway production of Our Town recently embarked on a memorable journey to Peterborough, New Hampshire, the quaint town that inspired Thornton Wilder’s timeless play. The visit provided the actors with a deeper understanding of the setting that has captured the imaginations of audiences for decades.
The trip included stops at the Peterborough Town House, where the cast visualized the town meetings depicted in the play, and the MacDowell, an artists’ retreat where Wilder himself worked on Our Town. For many of the cast members, this journey was more than just a rehearsal exercise; it was a pilgrimage to the roots of American theater.
Check out photos and a video of the visit below!
Our Town will begin previews on Tuesday, September 17 ahead of an opening on Thursday, October 10 at the Barrymore Theatre (243 West 47th) for a strictly limited engagement.
About Our Town
The new Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town directed by Tony Award-winner Kenny Leon, will feature 28 actors led by Emmy, Golden Globe & Screen Actors Guild Award-winner Jim Parsons as “Stage Manager”, Zoey Deutch as “Emily Webb”, Katie Holmes as “Mrs. Webb”, Obie & Audelco Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Billy Eugene Jones as “Dr. Gibbs”, Tony & Grammy Award-nominee Ephraim Sykes as “George Gibbs”, Tony & Drama Desk Award-nominee and Emmy-Award-winner Richard Thomas as “Mr. Webb”, Tony & Drama Desk-nominee Michelle Wilson as “Mrs. Gibbs”, 2021 Special Tony Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Julie Halston as “Mrs. Soames”, Donald Webber Jr. as “Simon Stimpson”, as well as Ephie Aardema, Heather Ayers, Willa Bost, Bobby Daye, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Doron JéPaul, Shyla Lefner, Anthony Michael Lopez, John McGinty, Bryonha Marie, Kevyn Morrow, Hagan Oliveras, Noah Pyzik, Sky Smith, Bill Timoney, Matthew Elijah Webb and Nimene Sierra Wureh. The final two cast members will be announced at a later date.
The design team for Our Town will include scenic design by Tony Award-winner Beowulf Boritt (New York, New York; Act One,), costume design by Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Dede Ayite (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding; Topdog/Underdog), lighting design by Tony Award-nominee Allen Lee Hughes (Topdog/Underdog; A Soldier’s Play), sound design by Tony Award-nominee Justin Ellington (Ohio State Murders; for colored girls…) and the dialect coach will be Kate Wilson (The Shark is Broken, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window).
“Thornton Wilder’s Our Town – in my mind stands at the top of the Mount Rushmore of great American Theatre,” said Kenny Leon. “I feel blessed and fortunate to have gained the trust of The Wilder estate to present this classic to another generation of theatre lovers. It’s long been a burning desire to collaborate on a Broadway production of such magnitude that speaks so beautifully and intimately to all people about our shared time on the planet.” This will be the first major Broadway revival of the classic play in nearly 25 years.
Speaking for the Wilder family, the playwright’s nephew and literary executor, Tappan Wilder said: “The Wilders are thrilled beyond measure that the distinguished director Kenny Leon has agreed to direct Our Town on Broadway. The stars are truly aligned for Grover’s Corners, the play about everywhere.”
Our Town, the timeless drama of life in the mythical village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, has become an American classic with universal appeal. Thornton Wilder’s most frequently performed play, Our Town appeared on Broadway in 1938 to wide acclaim, and won the Pulitzer Prize. From the very beginning, Our Town has been produced throughout the world.
Our Town explores the relationship between two young Grover’s Corners neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts of Our Town–growing up, adulthood, and death–is fully realized. Wilder offers a couple of chairs on a bare stage as the backdrop for an exploration of the universal human experience. The simple story of a love affair is constantly rediscovered because it asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life and death. In the final moments of the play, the recently deceased Emily is granted the opportunity to revisit one day in her life, only to discover that she never fully appreciated all she possessed until she lost it. “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you,” she says as she takes her place among the dead.
Best-selling author Ann Patchett, whose recently published 2023 critically acclaimed novel “Tom Lake: A Novel” (#1 New York Times Bestseller; A Reese’s Book Club Pick) was influenced by her love and appreciation of Our Town with the novel paralleling and referencing the play.
Patchett wrote the following in her Author’s Note: “I thank Thornton Wilder, who wrote the play that has been an enduring comfort, guide, and inspiration throughout my life. If this novel has a goal, it is turn the reader back to Our Town, and to all of Wilder’s work therein lies the joy.”
Thornton Wilder did most of his writing while traveling away from his home in Hamden, CT. Our Town was written on transatlantic steamers, in hotels and in hideaways across the United States and Europe, especially in Switzerland. His fictional town of Grover’s Corners was inspired by the real-life New Hampshire town of Peterborough, home to MacDowell, the famed artists residency program where Wilder stayed and wrote. Patchett herself, also had a residency there.
In a New York Times essay titled “The Genius of Grover’s Corners” in 2007 at the time of publication of Thornton Wilder’s volume of drama in the Library of America (“Wilder’s Collected Plays & Writings on Theater”), Jeremy McCarter wrote: “When stated properly, the play doesn’t let us feel simple nostalgia. We ought to weep at Emily’s famous line not because she finds earth wonderful, but because she was unable to find it so during her close-minded life in her close minded town – which is, of course, our town. Wilder makes a profound statement about the limits of human understanding here, one that requires delicacy and a little steel to convey.”
For more background information on Thornton Wilder and the history of Our Town, please visit https://www.thorntonwilder.com/our-town, the official website of the Thornton Wilder family.
This production is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, Hunter Arnold, Craig Balsam, Irene Gandy, Rebecca Gold, Louise Gund, Willette & Manny Klausner, M/B/P Productions, Daryl Roth and Jayne Baron Sherman.
