Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder was an American novelist and playwright whose works include Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Our Town: A 1938 play by Thornton Wilder that depicts everyday life and death in the fictional New Hampshire town of Grover's Corners. Its bare stage and address to the audience exemplify Wilder’s distinctive theater.
Stage manager: A theater worker who oversees a production’s practical coordination and performance. In Our Town, Wilder turns this role into a narrator who guides the action.
American modernism: A movement in United States literature and arts that developed new forms in response to modern life. Wilder’s formal experimentation belongs to a period of broad literary innovation.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: An annual American award for distinguished fiction published in book form. Wilder won it for The Bridge of San Luis Rey in 1928.
The Skin of Our Teeth: A 1942 play by Thornton Wilder in which the Antrobus family survives disasters spanning human history. Its comic, self-conscious stagecraft extends Wilder’s experiments beyond Our Town.
Metatheatre: Theatrical practice in which a play draws attention to its own status as a performance. Wilder’s characters and stage directions often expose the artifice of the play.
American drama: The body of theatrical writing produced in the United States. Wilder helped establish a distinctive American stage alongside contemporaries such as Eugene O’Neill.
Tony Award for Best Play: A Tony Award recognizing the season’s best new play on Broadway. Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth received the inaugural award in 1947.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A 1927 novel by Thornton Wilder about five people killed when a bridge collapses in colonial Peru. This novel brought Wilder major literary recognition before his best-known plays.
Minimalist theatre: Theater that uses restrained staging, scenery, or theatrical means to focus attention on performance and language. Wilder’s sparse staging makes imagined settings and ordinary gestures carry unusual weight.

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