¶ … Towns, Alike in Dignity
Modern theatrical literature has become increasingly concerned with the goings-on in small towns and often largely un-notable communities. The epic plots and larger-than-life characters that occupied plays in Shakespeare's day and in much subsequent drama took place either in large metropolises, both real and imagined, or else in wildernesses of untamed forest or uninhabited isles. The small towns and hamlets that most people occupied were largely ignored, and the fanciful and more important-seeming tales of the rich and powerful and the cities that they occupied held the stage. Interestingly, as industrialization has increased urbanization so that now most people live in or near major cities, drama has begun to focus on the smaller towns that are being left behind. Perhaps this can be understood as a reaction to the loss itself, in some instances, and in others it has more to do with the continuation of these small towns in the real world as much of that world abandons them.
Thornton Wilder's Our Town, one of the earlier examples of this small-town dramatic focus, definitely falls into the former camp. The imaginary New England town of Grover's Corner that he presents to the audience is populated by individuals who hardly have a thought bigger...
Everyone in town knows everybody else, and they all share in each other's hopes, dreams, failures, and successes without any real rancor or adversity. Ultimately, Wilder depicts the simple way of life led in these towns in all of its human depths and complexities; the small town is where being human is most visible and, perhaps, most possible.
The community of Laramie, a real town and the center of a great deal of heated controversy, is also very tight-knit, with much of the town known to much of the rest (though not quite with the same level of intimacy as is seen in Grover's Corner). The Laramie Project was created by a theatre group (and officially scripted by Moises Kaufmann) based on interviews with residents of the real town of Laramie, where a young gay teenager was brutally beaten and killed and a storm of religious and social fury erupted. Though there is the same sense of shred destinies in this town as there is in Thornton Wilder's vision of a calmer small-town America, the citizens of Laramie are not content to sit by and philosophize on the simple events that they and their neighbors encounter, but rather become heavily polarized near-combatants in a…
