Led by the RBHS theatre director, Sandy Welty, students from Acting One, competitive acting and the acting and directing classes performed Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” on Dec. 11-13.

Set in the early 1900s in Grover’s Corner, NH, the story follows the lives of the Webb and Gibbs families’ to explore themes of life, love and death. The play was performed four times in the RBHS PAC, filling not just the stage, but the whole space with actors and lights.

When working through the play, Welty challenged the students, picking a play where the actors had to tell the story primarily through dialogue and movement rather than scenery and props.

Before the play begins, the stage is lit in blue and has two tables on opposite ends of the stage. The lighting designer, senior Ellis Graham, worked with the technical theatre director, Luke Robison, to carefully select lighting that fits with the scenes.

“There aren’t many sets so the lights define how the audience perceives the show,” Graham said. “Cooler colors, like blues, purples and blacks, are for darker times, reflecting, maybe about death. Warmer colors like pinks, reds, yellows, are for passing through the day, weddings, love and relationships.”

Opening act one, titled “Daily Life,” in 1901, the stage manager and narrator, senior Cole Riney, describes a day in Grover’s corner by showing the Webb and Gibbs family’s daily routines. After Emily Webb, played by senior Sophia Jenkins, gets off of school, she meets up with the love interest, George Gibbs, played by senior William Summerall, and builds the foundation of their relationship. Jenkins said that the hardest part of the show was figuring out how to connect the audience to the show so they can understand it.

“The whole show is pantomime so we don’t have any props,” Jenkins said. “We have to pretend that we’re seeing all these things. It’s difficult, but it’s so interesting.”

Act two, titled “Love and Marriage,” starts three years later with the same morning routine scene as the first, this time on the day of George and Emily’s wedding. The narrator goes back in time, dropping the audience in a yellow-lit stage when George admits how important Emily is to him. Then, coming back to the present in a pink-lit wedding scene between the two. 

“One of my favorite scenes is in act two: the wedding scene,” Graham said. “There’s a lot of color and different transitions with the light based on how the actors are feeling so it’s a really cool way to portray what’s going on.”

The final act, titled “I Reckon You Can Guess What This Act is About,” opens in a graveyard nine years later, featuring the ghosts of characters met throughout the show sitting next to their headstones. With one empty chair in the middle of the stage, Emily enters after dying during childbirth. She asks the narrator if she can spectate and relive her twelfth birthday in 1899 so she can see the world one last time. She ends up regretting the decision, overwhelmed by how short life is and upset over all the things she could have done, retiring to her gravestone where her widower visits her grave before the curtains close.

“Act three [is my favorite part]. It is tragic, but it’s real,” Jenkins said. “[The play] is written in the 30’s, and it’s still so relevant.”

Every year, Welty picks a piece for the class to perform to help develop each student’s talents in theatre, film, directing, light and sound design. In January, students will attend the Missouri Thespian Society conference in St. Louis to audition for colleges and compete for scholarships. Graham, and the sound designer, Lucy Welty, are both submitting their work in this play for the conference.

“Our Town’ [is] a cornerstone of U.S. theatre,” Welty said. “For this particular advanced acting class there are quite a few that will [continue theatre] so it was very important they experienced this beautiful script.”

What did you think of the play? Let us know down below!