Events in 2008
“Our Town” presented by Drama high school kids at the American Corner in Xanthi
Thorton Wilder’s “Our Town” was presented by the students of the Music Junior High School of Drama in the city of Xanthi, on Sunday, December 14, 2008, under the auspices of the American Corner and the House of Culture “Constantinos Benis” of Xanthi.
Consul General Yee and staff had the opportunity to attend and enjoy the play, which was presented in English, under the direction of the English Language teacher Ms. Metaxeni Symeonidou.
A few words about the play: While living in Chicago, Thornton Wilder became close friends with fellow lecturer Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas. In fact, Stein's novel The Making of Americans (1925) is said to have inspired Wilder's Our Town (1938). Tracing the childhood, courtship, marriage, and death of Emily Webb and George Gibbs, the play finds universal meaning in the ordinary lives lived in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire. (The fictional town was based on Peterborough, New Hampshire, where Wilder spent summers at the MacDowell Colony.) A huge success on Broadway, Our Town earned Wilder his second Pulitzer, making him the only American author to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama. Wilder himself took on the role of the Stage Manager for two weeks in the Broadway production and in summer stock productions in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. (In 1988, the play's 50th anniversary revival on Broadway earned the Tony Award for Best Revival; the 2003 Westport Country Playhouse revival would earn a Tony nomination for the same award.)
Read Electronic Press about this event http://www.akritasmedia.gr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1767&Itemid=30