Back Our Town for Our Time: How Thornton Wilder’s Play Speaks to a Changing America and Around the World

LOA Live: A conversation with Tappan Wilder, Michel Hausmann, and Julie Vatain-Corfdir

May 3, 2022—Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, is one of the most-produced classics in the American repertory. How is it that this quintessentially American masterpiece continues to resonate so profoundly in places where both “our” and “town” mean radically different things?

We join Tappan Wilder, Thornton Wilder’s nephew and literary executor; director Michel Hausmann, creator of Miami’s acclaimed trilingual production in Spanish, Haitian Creole, and English; and the Sorbonne’s Julie Vatain-Corfdir, translator and director of a French production, for a conversation about the twenty-first-century global rediscovery of Wilder’s greatest play.

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

LOA LIVE programs are made possible by contributions from friends like you, and we encourage you to consider making a donation to support future presentations. Visit loa.org/loalive to donate.

We thank our promotional partners: The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW); the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library; Concord Theatricals; Miami New Drama; NYU/Skirball Center; the Thornton Wilder Estate; the Writers Guild Foundation.

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