by Jason Keane. @AKeaneMachine.
PORTSMOUTH, NH. - Presses all around the world stopped on a dime today at the announcement made by Portsmouth Community Theater’s artistic director, Simon Shielsberg, about his upcoming production of Our Town - an iteration of the commonly barebones show that will not only have real props for the actors to use, but will have sets available as well.
“Everytime I see a production of this show, the actors don’t got nothin’ to work with,” goddamn madlad Shielsberg told reporters. “No coffee cups, no houses, zip, nada. So I start thinkin… ‘What if they did?’ Boom. Now I know that Wilder fella didn’t want that stuff in his show, but that fella is six feet unda, so what’s he gonna do about it?”
We spoke to the props master/scenic director of the production, Amy Wilson, about this groundbreaking take on the source material.
“I am in 100% over my head,” said Wilson, downing her 3rd coffee before noon. “I signed up to do both because I thought this would be an easy gig, but I didn’t know Simon’s plan. I feel like I’m back in college when I had to pull an all-nighter for an essay I forgot about. Did you know Simon wants, like, a real fucking horse? And he wants me to find one because it’s, ‘technically a prop’? I can’t do this - Our Town is supposed to be the easy one!” she added before bursting into tears and running away.
While many people are excited for this bold reimagining, some, including theater historian Don Regus, are upset with the director’s drastic vision.
“This is a complete betrayal of Thorton Wilder’s original script,” said Regus, leading a small protest of one outside the theater. “The pantomiming of both the props and sets is integral to the life blood of the play. If you erase that, you erase the true magic of theater… and also it will make you realize Our Town is really fucking boring.”
Portsmouth Community Theater plans on continuing to embrace this mindset with upcoming shows, such as a production of Harvey where an actor in a bunny suit will play the titular role, and a production of Cats with, well, you can probably guess.