There was a time in America when the identifying symbols of a city or town were the courthouse and the churches, representing our commitment to the ideas of democracy and freedom of belief. That has since been replaced by sports glory structures and corporate high-rises, representing the emergence of our desire for vicarious fantasy and money as primary pursuit and value.
Reflecting on Thorton Wilder’s play Our Town and the recent production given it by Rogue Theatre, is not just an exercise in nostalgia or longing for different or simpler times. But rather it’s an immediate examination of current actions, current hopes and dreams, crisis and catharsis, and a question of what drives us onward, what do we hold near and dear to our hearts. I love this play for many reasons, and in fact consider it to be one of the best plays ever written. Its stigma as a “high school” play with accompanying perpetrated cliches is too bad – because that it ain’t. So when Rogue announced its production, I was elated.
Rogues theatrical manifesto holds language and imagination as joint and primary conveyors of story and theatrical expression. My own manifesto if written would hold event and ritual as the essential components. With that difference defined, let me say I include language and imagination and Rogue includes event and ritual. The degree of emphasis though, and the reasoning behind it, separates us. I may talk more of this later but I bring it up now to offer a clue as to my own bias and taste, and to try and appreciate and understand what it is to be a spectator at a particular theatrical function.
Returning to the facts of the first paragraph: If change and relief are going to come again to our cities and towns, from where and how will it happen? Like all good answers today, I believe the “Green” Revolution holds the best hope. When Wilder penned his play and chose the time and place of the story, he crossed from agrarian society to industrial society, and from one calendar century to another effectively – the “big boom” of change. In our present day and age we hold the next change at hand, and perhaps it will take us back to something agrarian like.
In Our Town, cause and effect is measured and understood by the inch, neighbor to neighbor, rippling out eventually to the larger world and back again. “Green” Revolution ideas ask us to consider life the same way, inch by inch. What happens next door socially, politically, psychologically and ecologically when I build this, or say this, or do this here and now? What systems and applications will create the ways and means for us to have a healthy and holistically sound living environment? What is the reasoning behind our infrastructures, and what are the goals? And what is actually happening there within the infrastructure? The promise of America still waits. Green Revolution ideas create things that hold both individual meaning and value, as well as collective meaning and value – based on every single individual in daily life, daily action – whether you are famous or recognized or not – simple and practical and understandable. The industrial revolution on the other hand created what we have today – systems and infrastructures based on general economic leverage, whereby the unique individual is by-passed for convenience, profit and uniformity. (And then is asked to stay healthy.). Cultural symbols of the Industrial Revolution represent fame or glory, and/or the vagueness of monetary wealth and power.
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