same dance 3 ways

mother daughter this time

ooo…do you see the moon!

No “sets” … Our Town is better with no sets, so says the playwright Thornton Wilder - by way of the Stage Manager/Narrator character…so you have to do it. You can ignore the stage directions, but cutting line is illegal… In those opening stage directions he tells us the audience should see “an empty stage in half light”. As the audience settles, the house lights go down, leaving the audience in “total darkness”. He doesn’t say that the stage lights go up, or that there is a spot light on the stage manager.

The stage manager/narrator tell us the basics of the play and tells us about the light we should imagine: