Queensland Theatre | Our Town
Skip to main content
OURTOWN 2160

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...

Read more
QT Our Town photo Pia Johnson 078

Our Town - Play Briefing

Placeholder
Sign Up