Community Lauds “Our Town”
By: Jett Goetz, Sheala Iacobucci, and Andrea Nydset
Just before the sun went down, upperclassmen performers gathered on the outdoor stage behind Goel dressed in costumes made for the 19th century. With the student orchestra off to the right, a crowd of faculty, students and parents congregated in front of the stage.
Organized by Religion Instructor Russell Weatherspoon and Theatre and Dance faculty member Sarah Ream, a cast of seniors and uppers performed Thorton Wilder’s Our Town at 7:30 p.m. on May 13, 14 and 15. During the play, performers were given the option to take off their masks.
Ream explained her reasoning behind choosing Our Town. “It's a play I've always loved. I first directed it when I was 26,” Ream said. “ I think it really talks about the human condition. It talks about everyday life, love, and death. That's one of the reasons why it just resonates with people still, it's pretty timeless and it's pretty universal.”
Ream also noted the anti-racist goals of the play. “I got the idea for it last November out of the anti-racist work that we did when there was a webinar with town councilors, and the people of color were talking about how their experience as residents was just very different than that of the white inhabitants of the town. I really began to think about what could have changed in history so that people felt completely at home,” Ream said.
This inspired Ream to invite the students to create new autobiographies for their characters based on their own identities. Stage manager and senior Sarah Nicholls said, “Some people went with the gender and racial norms of the time and some people completely disregarded them and said, ‘this is what I would have wanted the time period to be.’ So it was really cool to see who went with what and how that played into their character. The care and the detail that they took in creating their autobiographies really showed in their portrayal of the character.”
Upper Marina Williams, who acted as Emily Webb-Gibbs, fully supported the decision to create autobiographies. “We had a meeting where we got to sit and hear the biographies everyone wrote for their character, and it was really cool hearing people incorporate their culture with their characters,” Williams said. “One thing that played a big part was making sure I acknowledged the fact that I played an educated Black woman in the 1900s. I made an effort to allow my character to be very confident and independent but also realize the part that she played in society and the struggles that she would've faced because of her intersectionality.”
Music Instructor Jerome Walker appreciated the adjustment. “I think that encouraging us to take a play that is rooted in a very traditional idea of ‘here are the people who ‘belong here’ and changing it to ‘here the people who find themselves here and that's who we're going to make community with’ is a great reimagination of what the play can mean moving forward,” Walker said.
To create a more in-depth idea of what the setting of the play would historically look like, the cast received history lessons about the Academy, the town of Exeter and New England each Wednesday. “One of the things that I wanted to do was to find out more about what actually happened and then invite the cast to consider with me in whatever way they wanted to about what the journey of each individual character was so that they could be a person in the town of Grover's Corners and be whatever gender or race or ethnicity they were and feel completely at home,” Ream said.
“Activities like taking a walk around the town of Exeter with an eye toward its more diverse past were kind of novel innovations which helped create far greater awareness than I'm sure members of the cast had of the complexity of Exeter's history,” Weatherspoon said.
The cast and crew also considered COVID precautions while putting together the play. “Putting on a performance while one is also trying to deal with the health concerns related to COVID is significant,” Weatherspoon said. “As are the modifications that people in the theater department needed to make for the play to be seen, namely creating things like external stage, external lighting, and external sound.”
Upper and orchestra member Ware Guite appreciated the creativity of the play. “I liked the minimal props production because I thought it was kind of cool, and it worked if you watched it and [imagined] it to happen,” Guite said. “Because it was outdoors, it would've been hard to have any big-time stage props.”
The creativity of these modifications was especially highlighted when a member of the cast contracted the virus, causing six members to quarantine. “Everyone who was in quarantine [attended meetings] on Zoom. Someone with the laptop would follow Ms. Ream around as she was blocking so that the people in quarantine could see everything we had,” Nicholls said. “We really didn't fall behind. We were able to get back on track of our normal schedule about a week or two after everyone came out of quarantine, which was a real accomplishment. I'm just really proud of how everyone handled that situation, because it really was not ideal, but we were able to make it work.”
Senior Louis Mukama, who played Dr. Frank Gibbs, described his experience acting in the play. “When I auditioned for a part in Our Town this February, I was looking for an experience to define my senior spring and I’ve found just that. Before this, I had several opportunities to take part in the Exeter theater program—casting calls and auditions—but never took part because it felt outside of my wheelhouse. This time around though, I wanted to 'scare' myself and try something new, leaning into discomfort as we’re taught to do,” Mukama said.
Mukama also witnessed the audience’s reaction to the performance. “Parents, grandmothers, and other assorted guests sat in a crescent facing the stage. Exonians filled in the gaps. The older attendants sat and paid full attention to the play, laughing and chuckling at the play’s jokes about marriage, death, and everything else life throws at a person,” Mukama said.
“Students however, more often than not, did not catch onto the jokes and subtle meaning of the play. They trickled in and out of the audience and their laughter or reactions were rarely heard,” Mukama observed.
“Does life at Exeter move too fast for us to appreciate the everyday and the ordinary? Perhaps the adage that age comes with wisdom really is true and that’s why, from my perspective, the play made a bigger impact on the older attendants,” Mukama said.
Guite acknowledged the impact of the play. “The third act...was probably my favorite because it dealt with some pretty heavy ideas, and just the idea of us not really knowing what's going to happen in our lives. And if we did, it's the ignorance of human life that we actually love,” Guite said.
Williams noted how the play helped her appreciate life. “Having to practice 'my' death in Act Three over and over really reminded me that it is important to ‘realize life while I live it...every, every minute,’ as Emily says,” Williams said. “It made me really appreciate the opportunity to even perform this play because a lot of schools can't do this right now, let alone perform maskless.”
“This play taught me to really be in the moment and take in all the beautiful 'little' things that we often overlook,” Williams added.
Prep Cee McClave, a member of the student orchestra, watched all three performances. “I thought it was incredible! The story is a little slow, especially the first half, but the actors imbued life into it and turned it into an enjoyable experience,” they said.
Ream reflected on the production, as it is her last before retirement. “Part of what I love about this play is that it really affirms what's best in the human spirit. It's a play about the importance of community, so this feels like my little Valentine to the Academy before I leave, because at its best it's a really extraordinary community. What I would love it to be is just maybe holding a little bit of a mirror up to look at what is best in all of us,” Ream said.