The Lasting Impact of Our Town

Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer prize-winning play Our Town was recently voted one of the top ten plays of the last 100 years by Entertainment Weekly. Ned Rorem and J. D. McClatchy's opera Our Town, part of Central City Opera's 2013 Festival, is closely based on this classic play.

Our Town has no explosions, no alien invasions, no giant robots…why is it so gripping?

Mo Rocca asked this question during a feature on CBS Sunday Morning a few years ago. The video below gives some insight on why this has become America's most produced play.

Perhaps Donald Margulies summed it up best in his foreward to the 2003 printing of Our Town:

Indeed the play's success across cultural borders around the world attests to its being something much greater than an American play: it is a play that captures the universal experience of being alive.

Central City Opera's production of Our Town the opera runs July 6 through 28, 2013. Tickets start at just $20.