VUW Theatre students present: "Our Town"
Do any human beings ever realise life while they live it?
Third-year theatre students from Victoria University of Wellington are challenging people to find value in the smallest events of their daily lives. Under the tutelage of Wellington director Sally Richards, the students of THEA 311 and 308 are reimagining Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer prize winning play Our Town, hoping it will ‘wake up’ audiences in this age of disruption.
Our Town follows the lives of people from the fictional town of Grover's Corner. It offers beautifully crafted vignettes portraying aspects of everyday life. The play asserts, that in the most ordinary events lie the most extraordinary meanings of our lives. And that just as youth is wasted on the young, so too is life wasted on the living.
“Thornton Wilder gifted us a scaffold that incites development so that each generation can fill it with their own evolving social values,” say THEA 311 students Jodi Norris and Oliver Pol. “The play is timeless and universal and will always be relevant.”
THEA 311 focuses on ensemble work, is inter-disciplinary and encourages creative thinking. Through the process of getting Our Town from page to stage, the students have developed a range of skills that they will be able to use in the theatre and beyond. THEA 308 focuses on the show’s design elements and have collaborated with THEA 311 to create timeless costuming and “an abstract world of cardboard cubes” to set this production apart from its predecessors.
Director Sally Richards says she hopes audiences will be moved to reflect on how much they rush through life. “This is a challenge to stop, look away from the screen, and take a breath,” she says.
“Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.”
What: Our Town by Thornton Wilder directed by Sally Richards, performed by the students of THEA 311.
When: Wednesday 6th - Saturday 9th June 2018 at 7pm with a Matinee performance on 9 June at 1pm. Please check Eventfinda for a full list of specific times.
Where: Studio 77, 77 Fairlie Terrace, Kelburn.
Tickets: $8/$16
Bookings: Eventfinda.co.nz, search “our town.”
For more information, images and interview requests, please contact Emily Bates from the THEA 311 student publicity team.
Mobile: 027 500 1318
Email: emily.bug.bates@gmail.com
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