Our Town

By Thornton Wilder
Directed by Lee Lewis

Life Community Joy

With a story so simple and a heart so warm, this classic celebrates all that is precious in life. Life in a small town. Babies are born. Children go to school, and play and dream. People grow up, fall in love, get married, hold down a job, and grow old. The same surnames last dow...

With a story so simple and a heart so warm, this classic celebrates all that is precious in life.

Life in a small town. Babies are born. Children go to school, and play and dream. People grow up, fall in love, get married, hold down a job, and grow old. The same surnames last down through the years, but the faces change. There are inevitable tragedies and triumphant joys.

As we come to know the people in this town, we see how the threads of their everyday lives are gently woven into the rich and complex, funny and heartbreaking fabric that is community. And for all its simplicity, this play reveals a great truth at its heart: deep meaning and startling value are in every moment of existence. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town has long been America’s most performed play. It reminds us to look to the future with hope, to see the beauty in the everyday world and to cherish the people we love.

Learn more about Thornton Wilder

Our Town program 2021 Education Pack

Dates

30 JAN - 20 FEB [PAST EVENT]
Location

Bille Brown Theatre, Queensland Theatre
Times

Evenings: Mon & Tue 6.30pm, Wed – Sat 7.30pm
Matinees: Wed 1.00pm, Sat 2.00pm
Buy Season Tickets
Night with the Artists

Mon 8 Feb, 6.30pm
Duration

2 hr 45 min, inc intervals
Accessibility

Auslan Interpreted Mon 8 Feb, 6.30pm
Play briefing

Mon 25 Jan, 6.00pm
Warning

This play contains theatrical haze, lighting blackouts and mature themes, including a reference to suicide

This play contains theatrical haze, lighting blackouts and mature themes, including a reference to suicide

Dates

30 JAN - 20 FEB [PAST EVENT]
Location

Bille Brown Theatre, Queensland Theatre
Times

Evenings: Mon & Tue 6.30pm, Wed – Sat 7.30pm
Matinees: Wed 1.00pm, Sat 2.00pm
Buy Season Tickets
Night with the Artists

Mon 8 Feb, 6.30pm
Duration

2 hr 45 min, inc intervals
Accessibility

Auslan Interpreted Mon 8 Feb, 6.30pm
Play briefing

Mon 25 Jan, 6.00pm
Warning

This play contains theatrical haze, lighting blackouts and mature themes, including a reference to suicide

This play contains theatrical haze, lighting blackouts and mature themes, including a reference to suicide

Creatives

Playwright Thornton Wilder
Director Lee Lewis
Costume Designer Nathalie Ryner
Lighting Designer Paul Jackson
Composer/Sound Designer THE SWEATS

Cast

Stage Manager Jimi Bani
Professor Willard Andrew Buchanan
Rebecca Gibbs Mia Foley
Wally Webb Angus Freer
Emily Webb Lucy Heathcote
Wally Webb Luca Klarwein
Mrs Webb Amy Lehpamer
Mrs Soames/Jo Crowell/Si Crowell Roxanne McDonald
Mrs Gibbs Libby Munro
Mr Webb Hugh Parker
George Gibbs Jayden Popik
Constable Warren Silvan Rus
Rebecca Gibbs Ava Ryan
Dr Gibbs Colin Smith
Simon Stimson Anthony Standish
Howie Newsome Egan Sun-Bin

"No curtain. No scenery. The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light."

Thornton Wilder’s opening stage direction nimbly sets out his manifesto for Our Town: it was to require the audience to participate on a journey into imagination.

In the late 1930s, when the play was written and first staged, an audience arriving to see an empty stage might be perturbed, presuming they’d come on the wrong night, or at the wrong time...