Elements Of Beijing Opera In Thornton Wilder’s Our Town

Thornton Wilder remains the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes in both drama (for Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth) and fiction (for The Bridge of San Luis Rey). As one of his representative works, his play Our Town is a great success. It is unique in the dramatic form and stage presentation, the likes of which had not been seen on American stages before its premier in1938. First, plot and time are nonlinear; flashbacks and foreknowledge of characters’ fates give the audience a complete awareness of the past, present, and future. Second, there is no curtain, no scenery, no props; actors pantomime such stage business as cooking breakfast, delivering milk, and sipping ice cream sodas. Third, the Stage Manager repeatedly comments directly to the audience on the characters and actions. The function of these nonrealistic theatrical techniques is to put emphasis on the ideas Wilder trying to go after and to encourage audiences to use their imagination to picture perhaps their own towns, thus creating the empathy that makes Our Town moving and thought-provoking.With its simple stage setting, limited props, its gestures and pantomimes as the means of dramatic expression, and its flexibility in space and density in time, as well as its integration of conventions and spontaneity, Beijing opera may be considered as the artistic prototype of Our Town. There are so many artistic techniques in common between Our Town and Beijing opera. Together with his experience in China, Wilder learned these techniques from Beijing Opera. From the non-illusionist approach in Chinese theatre, Wilder recognized that even the important events of everyday life can be presented by actors on an open platform, reacting not to a realistic setting but to the private thoughts and personal relations of the characters in the fictive world on that platform. So it is possible and worthwhile to examine the elements of Beijing opera in his plays.This thesis is divided into five chapters to examine and compare the elements of Beijing opera in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Chapter One includes the introduction to Wilder and his literary career, the pla Our Town and Literature Review. Chapter Two studies the characteristics of Beijing Opera and its possible influence on Wilder. Then in Chapter Three, Theatrical devices in Our Town are demonstrated, including the stage and props, the Stage Manager and the use of music. The dramatic elements of the play, from the performance, narrative structure, and allegorical cycle of the play to the repetition of words are investigated in Chapter Four, which also indicates the elements of Beijing Opera. Chapter five makes the conclusion that all the absorption and application of Beijing Opera elements in Our Town by wilder aim to break the monopoly of theater of realism, to create new modes to express philosophical meaning and then to elevate the true sense of life.