Our Town

The Barrymore Theatre in New York City seats about one thousand people. On the night we were there, recently, it was full, everyone having paid a lot of good money to see Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s classic American play about—well—us. Not us exactly, of course, but all of us as seen through the window of a small town in southern New Hampshire. Our town.

            The play did not disappoint. It never does, whether on Broadway or a high school stage. It was a pleasure watching professional actors dig into the roles, but they did not reveal any more about the play or its messages, which can rise to the surface just as well with the high schoolers. Maybe more so given that we are called to appreciate the moments as they fly by, and those high school moments do fly by. Thornton Wilder asks us to consider that as we sneak peeks at our mobile devices while the real action takes place in front of us, at the table, or across the room.

            On this occasion at the Barrymore, however, I was on a slightly different message wavelength. We were upstairs in the mezzanine where ticket prices were more affordable, so I had a good view of the entire house. I kept thinking, here I am managing to escape the winter woods for a couple of days, order a couple of macchiatos, contemplate a drink at a bar serving until 11:00 p.m., visit some friends and family, and all these people are paying what it costs to buy food for a week—not less, I promise—to hear what Mr. Wilder can share with them about life drawing on his experiences in our small corner of the world. 

            I am sure there were many people in the audience from small towns like ours. But they were indistinguishable from the rest, so, for me, it was one thousand New York City theatre-goers with the equivalent of their faces pressed against the glass, making personal connections thanks to depictions of a community that runs on a first-name basis. In this way, any small town can teach the world by slowing life down to an observable speed. I went to New York for a short ride in the fast lane, like taking a few laps in a sports car. Instead, my own world stared back at me. 

            Which had my mind drifting to the famous picture, called Earthrise, taken by astronaut, William Anders, from Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968. Wikipedia has a transcript of the banter that day between Anders and fellow astronauts, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell:

Anders: Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, that's pretty.
Borman: Hey, don't take that, it's not scheduled. (joking)^[1]
Anders: (laughs) You got a color film, Jim?
            Hand me that roll of color quick, would you...
Lovell: Oh man, that's great!

Photojournalist, Galen Rowell, would call it the “most influential environmental photograph ever taken.” Fifty-years later, William Anders would say, “We set out to explore the moon, and instead discovered the earth.”

            We went to New York to see a play and instead discovered our town.

Published in The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript