Thornton Wilder

The Drunken Sisters is Wilder's satyr play that followed The Alcestiad, his adaptation of the ancient Greek "Alcestis" story. Apollo ventures into the land of the three sisters of Fate who control the threads of each man's life, and here in disguise he tricks the sisters into releasing their death hold on King Admetus. His trick: 3 flagons of wine which he declares to be Aphrodite's beauty drink but which make the sisters drunk. He then foils them with a riddle, releasing the king

This play is thought to represent middle-age, in Wilder's unfinished cycle of The Ages of Man. On a point of land jutting into a lake in southern Wisconsin, the Carter family enjoys a summer's eve. It's an evening like many others: Nothing happens and everything happens. Each member of the family - sixteen year-old Tom, his seventeen-year-old sister Francesca and their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Carter - shares different memories somehow connected with their surroundings. These memories color the mo

To his horror, the middle-aged Captain Gulliver finds himself marooned, dying of hunger and thirst in "The Country of The Young"--a world of youth so mistrustful of age that anyone approaching thirty is ritually dispatched. Here, he encounters an ersatz aristocracy and servant class who are both appalled by and attracted to what they see in him. By virtue of age alone, he represents everything they hate--the old men immortalized in their books who have sent younger men off to war; old men who frustrate and thwart the young in order to keep themselves in power. Yet he appeals to their latent humanity and their need to do something other than just play at childish games. Through his cunning and wisdom, Gulliver manages to gain the trust of one of his female captors and enlist the help of a talented servant-class carpenter. Together they make a narrow escape, the two young islanders looking forward to the promise of a new world in which people may someday see their children grow into manhood and womanhood and hold their grandchildren on their knees. Conceived in the 1960s, amid a youthful population who had discovered for the first time its social and political clout, "Youth" might well have been Wilder's satirical meditation on the excesses of America. More than just a jab at a particular decade and the foibles of utopian idealism of young people everywhere, however, "Youth" demonstrates Wilder's ever-generous spirit, his life-long belief in community and the value of the contributions every individual can make.

In this play about the Deadly Sin of Lust, Saint Francis, almost blind and toothless and nearing the end of his life, revisits Assisi, where he encounters Pica, a young girl with the same name as his mother; Mother Clara of Saint Damian's Convent; and Mona Lucrezia (now a mad woman) with whom he had a love affair when he was a wild, willful young man known as Francis the Frenchman, and she was a young married woman. Saint Francis still seeks expiation for the "load of sin" with which he has offended God. The play poses questions about the true meaning of love-and, as Wilder wrote, about "the ideas of the Erotic as Destroyer and the Erotic as Creative."

Walbeck, a thoroughly hated man who cheated hundreds of people out of their money, suddenly returns home from Joliet prison when his sentence is reduced. He is greeted by two people: his attorney, who informs him that Walbeck's wife has fled to California, taking his daughter with her, and a new maid, Bernice, the self-proclaimed "best cook in Chicago" recently hired to keep the home going. Bernice, it turns out, served time for murder, and the advice she gives Walbeck on how to deal with his future allows Wilder to explore the nature of pride. Decisions have to be made quickly when Walbeck learns that his daughter is still in Chicago and coming by to see him at any moment.

Our Town was first produced and published in 1938 to wide acclaim. This Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners, an allegorical representation of all life, has become a classic. It is Thornton Wilder's most renowned and most frequently performed play.

Winner! 1938 Pulitzer Prize for DramaIn an important publishing event Samuel French in cooperation with the Thornton Wilder estate is pleased to release the playwright's definitive version of Our Town. This edition of the play differs only slightly from previous acting editions yet it presents Our Town as Thornton Wilder wished it to be performed. Described by Edward Albee as "...the greatest American play ever written " the story follows the small town

Welcome to a new collection of Thornton Wilder's last plays - a series of one acts that were part of his extravagantly ambitious project to creat two one act play cycles based on the Deadly Sins and the Ages of Man. Published for the first time in a single acting edition, Wilder's The Seven Deadly Sins presents a series of short works depicting the complexity and consequences of human frailty. Contents: The Drunken Sisters (Gluttony) Bernice (Pride) The Wreck on the 5:25 (Sloth) A Ringing of Doorbells (Envy) In Shakespeare and the Bible (Wrath) Someone From Assisi (Lust) Cement Hands (Avarice)

Welcome to a new collection of Thornton Wilder's last plays - a series of one-acts that were part of his extravagantly ambitious project to creat two one-act play cycles based on the Deadly Sins and the Ages of Man. Published for the first time in a single acting edition, Wilder's Ages of Man presents his series of stirring short works that capture four important stages of life. Contents: Infancy Childhood Youth The Rivers Under the Earth

This collection of Wilder's most famous one act plays includes, The Long Christmas Dinner, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, Pullman Car Hiawatha, Queens of France, Such Things Only Happen in Books, and Love and How to Cure It. In these mini-masterpieces, Wilder experiments with techniques and dramatic forms he would later develop in his celebrated full-length works, Our Town, The Matchmaker, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Alcestiad. Among these plays we encounter a first glimpse of Wilder's Stage Manager; his use of pantomime, minimal scenery, and farce; as well as his signature connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of the human experience.

Farce / Casting: 9m, 7f / Interior Scenery A certain old merchant of Yonkers is so rich in 1800 that he decides to take a wife. He employs a matchmaker a woman who subsequently becomes involved with two of his menial clerks, assorted young and lovely ladies, and the headwaiter at an expensive restaurant where this swift farce runs headlong into a hilarious complications. After everyone gets straightened out romantically and has his heart's desire, the merchant finds himself affianced to the astute matchmaker herself. He who was so shrewd in business is putty in the hands of Dolly Levi. He is fooled by apprentices in a series of hilarious hide and seek scenes, and finally has all his bluster explode in his face. "Loud, slap dash and uproarious ...extraordinarily original and funny." - The New York Times "Rolls along merrily and madly and the customers are convulsed." - N.Y. Journal American. "The lines of Wilder are so often brilliant, sage, and witty." - N.Y. Daily News

" Our Town] leaves us with a sense of blessing, and the unspoken but palpable command to achieve gratitude in what remains of our days on earth." -- The New YorkerThornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of life in the mythical village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire--an allegorical representation of all life--is an American classic. It is the simple story of a love affair that asks timeless questions about the meaning of love, life, and death. This beautiful hardcover edition features an illuminating afterword by Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder's nephew, and is the perfect gift for fans of this beloved tale.Our Town explores the relationship between two young neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, and then culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life during childbirth, the circle of life portrayed in each of the three acts--childhood, adulthood, and death--is fully realized.Widely considered one of the greatest American plays of all time, Our Town debuted on Broadway in 1938 and continues to be performed daily on stages around the world.

Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and 'an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life'. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a 'comic strip' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farce which urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life.

An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy. But one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths might not be as random as they appear. Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all he can about the travellers. The five strangers were connected in some way, he thinks. There must be a purpose behind their deaths. But are their lost lives the result of sin? ... Or of love?

A collection of six short plays by one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. Renowned for his masterful gift for revealing the miraculous in the seemingly mundane, these short plays showcase Thornton Wilder's ability to examine American life, death, and all the mysteries therein with warmth, humor, and grace. This collection includes The Long Christmas Dinner, Queens of France, Pullman Car Hiawatha, Love and How to Cure It, Such Things Only Happen in Books, and The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden.