Santa Ynez High School Theatre Group presents Our Town

The SYVUHS Theatre Group will be presenting Thornton Wilder's 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning classic Our Town as its fall semester production. Arguably the most famous and oft-produced American play of the 20th century, Our Town is both widely loved and widely misunderstood and under-appreciated by generations of readers who have read, often forcibly as part of a high school curriculum, and seen the play performed.

Author Howard Sherman wrote, in his recently published study of the play, Another Day's Begun: Thornton Wilder's Our Town in the 21st Century: “A work of startling originality when it debuted in 1938, Thornton Wilder's Our Town evolved to be seen by some as a vintage slice of early 20th century Americana, rather than being fully appreciated for its complex and eternal themes and its deceptively simple form…the play's continued impact in the 21st century makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises."

With a cast and crew of 35 students, director Jeff McKinnon's Theatre Group, in joining the thousands of other groups that have performed the play over the past 80 years, hopes to shine new light on what is ostensibly a simple story of early 20th century small-town American life. Its universal themes of the cycles of life: birth, growing up, marriage, death, and what lies beyond, are finding resonance with McKinnon's theatre students, proving to McKinnon the “staying power" of the play and its universal themes. “When one imagines which American plays might still be produced one hundred years from now," McKinnon writes, “Our Town might well be at the top of the list."

Our Town performs for the public six times: Thursdays through Saturdays December 2nd-4th & 9th-11th at 7:00 in the high school's Little Theatre. General Admission tickets, $10 for adults and $5 for students, will be available at the door. Spectators will be required to wear facemasks. For more information call 688-6487 x2361.
 

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Time: 7:00 PM - 9:15 PM Category:Arts | Performing Arts | Theatre