Moorestown High School’s theater students with Lenny Wagner (center), president of the Historical Society of Moorestown.
The Moorestown High School (MHS) theater program will present a production of “Our Town” in the high-school auditorium on Thursday, Oct. 24, Friday, Oct. 25, and Saturday, Oct. 26, all at 7 p.m.
“Our Town,” written by playwright Thornton Wilder, explores the relationship between two young Grover’s Corners neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life in childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts of “Our Town” – growing up, adulthood and death – is fully realized.
Senior Audrey Barr has been a member of the high-school’s theater program for four years and has been in eight Moorestown shows. She described the theater program as a supportive community and a beneficial opportunity for students. She’s playing the character of Mrs. Gibbs, George’s mother.
“We see in the show some pretty complex female characters,” Barr explained. “Thornton Wilder was very good at crafting these very complex characters, which you don’t typically get to see, and Mrs. Gibbs’ dream of her life is to go to Paris. She always talks about it, like how much she wants to go and it’s just her true dream, and you get to see throughout the show how her dreams progress. And you get to see how she, as a motherly figure, influences her children and makes sure that they are reflecting her image.
“I think it’s just very powerful to play a role like that where I have so much influence on other characters,” she added. “It feels like a very big responsibility.”
Wilder offers a couple of chairs on a bare stage as the backdrop for an exploration of the universal human experience. The simple story of a love affair is constantly rediscovered because it asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life and death. In the final moments of the play, the recently deceased Emily is granted the opportunity to revisit one day in her life, only to discover that she never fully appreciated all she possessed until she lost it.
Senior Teddy Simek plays the character of George, whom he described as an impatient boy who wants to grow up fast, someone who’s immature and very smart at the same time. He’s a big-time baseball player and he’s ready to move on to the next phase of his life. Simek sees parallels between himself and his character.
“Going back to wanting to break out of your town and go on and be a baseball player and work on a farm or any of that, I think, definitely resonates with me,” Simek noted. “Moorestown is a great town, but I always think about the future and traveling the world and seeing something else besides the town, and especially being a senior. It’s exciting.”
Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1897. He is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama. He received the Pulitzer for his novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” and the plays “Our Town” and “The Skin of Our Teeth.” His many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Book Committee’s Medal for Literature and the Goethe-Plakette Award.
Wilder was an accomplished essayist, translator, research scholar, teacher, lecturer, librettist and screenwriter. In 1942, he teamed with film director Alfred Hitchcock on the classic psycho-thriller “Shadow of a Doubt.”
Back in 2012, Moorestown High theater director Greg Harr came across the afterword of HarperCollins’ edition of “Our Town.” It explained the play’s connection to Wilder’s upbringing, according to the Moorestown Sun. Wilder was the best man at his brother Amos’ wedding to Catharine Kerlin, a Moorestown Friends School alum, a graduate of Smith College and a historian. The wedding took place in the garden of the Kerlin home in Moorestown.
After Harr discovered the town’s connection to Wilder, he shared the information with Lenny Wagner, then trustee of the Moorestown Historical Society, who managed to find Wilder’s descendants. Wagner discovered that Kerlin’s children had their mother’s belongings and were looking for a home for them. They donated the items to the Moorestown Historical Society.
Wagner spoke to the high-school theater students about Wilder’s township connection on Sept. 17. The students also got a chance to see a display of items that included Kerlin’s wedding dress and the original box, photos and wedding registry, among other items.
“When you think of ‘Our Town’ and its significance … to have this kind of connection to Moorestown is really cool,” Wagner said.
For information and updates, go to Moorestown High School Theater on Facebook, or mhstheater on Instagram. For questions, call (856) 778-6610 x22368 or e-mail moorestownhstheater@gmail.com. To purchase tickets, visit www.moorestownhstheater.weebly.com.
