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Title: Our Town
Author(s): Thornton Wilder
Licensing Agent: Samuel French, Inc
Genre: Drama
Length: Full Length
Male Roles: 17
Female Roles: 7
Extras: 0
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Description: Our Town is set in 1901 in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, where the Gibb's and the Webb's are neighbors. During their childhood George Gibb and Emily Webb are playmates and their lives are inextricably woven together as neighbors' lives are likely to be. But as they grow older they pass into a state of romantic (and embarrassing) interest in one another. George proposes to Emily in the drug store over an ice cream soda, and they are married with all the good folks of Grover's Corners in attendance. But George and Emily's happiness is short-lived. Emily dies in childbirth and is buried in the town's cemetery on a rainy, dreary day. There she is reunited with those friends and neighbors who have died before her, and who help her acclimate herself to her new existence. In one of the most vital scenes in modern theatre, the peace and quiet of death, which can never be understood by the living, is portrayed.
| Character |
Gender |
Role Size |
Min Age |
Max Age |
Description |
| Stage Manager |
M |
Lead |
30 |
60 |
a type of chorus, is a device Wilder uses to explain and comment upon the action and the characters as the play unfolds. |
| Doc Gibbs |
M |
Ensemble |
35 |
50 |
the father of George and Rebecca, is the local physician. He is shocked when he finds that his son wants to marry and become a farmer, but finally realizes the youth is really no longer a child, any more than the doctor was when he married. Dr. Gibbs is a hard-working man whose hobby is the American Civil War; his idea of a vacation is an excursion to some battlefield of that conflict. |
| Mrs Gibbs |
F |
Ensemble |
35 |
50 |
the mother of George and Rebecca, is a hard-working woman who loves her family, even though she does not always understand them. She has found joy in her marriage and hopes her son will find joy in his. |
| George Gibbs |
M |
Ensemble |
18 |
25 |
a typical young American boy who loves baseball, gives up going to college to marry Emily, whom he dearly loves. When his wife dies he is filled with grief and goes to sob at her grave, not realizing that she pities him for not valuing the life he still enjoys. |
| Rebecca Gibbs |
F |
Ensemble |
18 |
25 |
George's sister |
| Mr Webb |
M |
Ensemble |
35 |
50 |
Emily's father, is the editor and publisher of the local newspaper. He writes editorials every day, yet he cannot bring himself to advise his son-in-law on marriage, though he tries. |
| Mrs Webb |
F |
Ensemble |
35 |
50 |
the mother of Emily and Wally, is a good-hearted woman. On Emily's wedding day she finds herself unable to give her daughter advice on marriage, though she had meant to do so. |
| Emily Webb |
F |
Lead |
16 |
22 |
a sweet young thing, falls in love with and later marries George Gibbs. She dies in childbirth while still young and shyly takes her place among her relatives and friends in the little graveyard. She tries to live her twelfth birthday over, only to discover that to relive is no joy, that the dead can only pity the living who don't know what joy they have in life. |
| Wally Webb |
M |
Ensemble |
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Emily's brother |
| Simon Stimson |
M |
Ensemble |
30 |
50 |
the local choir director, has become an alcoholic because he cannot find happiness in the small town. Even in death, after committing suicide, he believes life is ignorance and folly. |
| Mrs Louella Soames |
F |
Ensemble |
30 |
50 |
A local busybody who clucks over Simon's alcoholism and idealizes George and Emily's marriage. She is a spirit in the last act |
| Howie Newsome |
M |
Ensemble |
30 |
50 |
The milkman who guides a seventeen-year-old horse named Bessie. Howie appears during Emily's return to the past in the last act. |
| Joe Crowell Jr |
M |
Ensemble |
16 |
20 |
Joe is the paper boy in the first act and also during the flashback, when Emily returns to life. A scholar at Massachusetts Tech, he is killed in France during World War I before he can use his education. |
| Si Crowell |
M |
Ensemble |
16 |
20 |
Joe's younger brother, who takes Joe's job as paper boy in Act II to indicate the passage of time. |
| Joe Stoddard |
M |
Ensemble |
35 |
65 |
The town undertaker, who provides background information in the third act. |
| Constable Bill Warren |
M |
Ensemble |
35 |
50 |
The town law enforcement officer, whose duties require him to be sure that doors are locked and that drain pipes are adequate. On February 7, 1899, he saves a man from freezing to death. |
| Professor Willard |
M |
Ensemble |
30 |
60 |
A faculty member of State University who recites facts about Grover's Corners. |
| Sam Craig |
M |
Ensemble |
30 |
40 |
The son of Julia Gibbs' sister Carey, he comes back from Buffalo after twelve years' absence. He provides exposition in the last act. |
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