Our Town
searching for the eternal in the mundane
Welcome back readers, and welcome, new readers –
For this post we have the great pleasure of sharing some thoughts from Nancy Voll, a wise, fun-loving, gracious, and courageous person who although she just turned 80 is embarking on new theatrical projects: read on to learn more!
Norann – in Danthonia, New South Wales, Australia
In a previous post, I introduced you to my mother-in-law, Nancy, who turned 80 years old in June.
I asked for her reflections on this milestone birthday and how it connects to what she’s planning next within the context of her own “seasons of community living”:
An eightieth birthday gives more than enough weight to the phrase “seasons of community living”!
Sixty years ago, as a 20-year-old, I played the part of Emily Webb in my college production of Thornton Wilder’s much-loved play “Our Town,” in what turned out to be a life-changing experience for me.
This year, realizing more than ever that I don’t know how many more birthdays I’ll be given and, as a huge birthday present to myself, I was inspired to direct and produce this play at Danthonia, the Australian Bruderhof community where I live. Thanks to the enthusiasm of my fellow community members, my wish has been granted – and an imaginary curtain will rise on a bare stage on 9-10 August 2024.
Why does it matter? What is it about my involvement in theatre and about this play in particular that has marked the seasons of my life since I could first sit next to my father on his piano bench and sing “Give my regards to Broadway”?
Set in the early 1900s, “Our Town” shows “the life of a village against the life of the stars” (Wilder). As one critic put it, in 1938: “It’s the stark emotions on a bare stage that render the play essential drama.” And another, more explicitly: “At first glance, “Our Town” appears to be a simple, innocuous portrait of life in the small New Hampshire town of Grover’s Corners. But as time passes in the three acts—an ordinary day, a wedding, a death—the play builds to a soaring exploration of human existence: its boundless trials, joys, questions, certainties” (National Endowment for the Arts).
An aside: “Our Town” first premiered on January 22, 1938, a one-night tryout in Princeton, New Jersey, at the McCarter Theatre. After WWII, this theatre was managed by my uncle and aunt and grandmother, and later would play a major role in my drama education (although I obviously missed Wilder’s historic production).
At 14, when I was just about to leave grade school for my local high school in Keyport, New Jersey, my mother took me to their performance of “Our Town.” The year was 1958—20 years after it had opened on Broadway. Riveted to my chair and hardly drawing breath, I was totally transported into Grover’s Corners, aware that I was seeing something very extraordinary, part of a theatrical experience that was completely different in scope and technique than I had ever seen in my short life. And I knew that I wanted to be involved with it someday.
Six years later, at 20, I had my chance at Dickinson College. I was cast in a leading role, as Emily Webb, whose life the play tracks—from girlhood to death. In the weeks of rehearsal leading up to opening night, Wilder’s themes—the universality of daily life; the timelessness of love, wonder, response to death; the appreciation of life that holds all of eternity within its seemingly insignificant, ordinary events—all became part of me with every line I spoke.
The Stage Manager introduces Act III, standing in the Grover’s Corners cemetery. (I won’t describe the scene, but once you’ve see it, you never forget it.) “…Now there are some things we all know but we don’t take ‘em out and look at ‘em very often. We all know that something is eternal…” And as the act draws to a close, Emily, who has died, has a conversation with the Stage Manager after she has begged to be allowed to go back to the living, to re-live her twelfth birthday: “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you! Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?” Stage Manager: “No—saints and poets maybe—they do some.”
Lines that would define the seasons of my life forever.
I graduated from college, teaching degree (English and Drama) in hand, I married my husband, Jerry Voll. (We enjoyed 55 years together before his death, in 2021 – or, as Wilder would put it, we “shared more than 50,000 meals together”!) At the start, Jerry pastored a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, while I taught at a local high school. But five years later, in 1971, in our continuing search for a deeper life of faith, commitment, and wholeness, we felt called to join the Bruderhof, a Christian community of families founded in Germany, in 1920.
The community was located in Norfolk, Connecticut, a small village I immediately identified in my mind’s eye with Grover’s Corners. And the men and women who lived there embodied all the matter-of-factness, the direct manner of talking, the hard-working simplicity of Wilder’s fictitious townsfolk. Here we discovered real men and women who believed in Jesus Christ and the coming kingdom he proclaimed in his Sermon on the Mount—believed in it enough to commit their entire lives, their hearts, all their property, and their actions to serve this kingdom here and now. We had found the pearl of great price, and the most fulfilling season of our lives was beginning.
One of my life’s passions had always been the theatre and all phases of it: acting, directing, set production, lighting, music, costumes, etc. So when Jerry and I decided to join the Bruderhof church, I knew I was embracing a shared life and that I was choosing to lay down my own aspirations. No more theatre, obviously! Or so I thought…
Ironically, over this 50-year season of my life I have been completely involved in producing plays of all stripes with young (and old) people at numerous Bruderhof communities: dramas, comedies, musicals (from Gilbert and Sullivan to Broadway), Shakespeare, and all manner of homespun scripts and concerts. What I gave up has been given back a thousand-fold.
Back to “Our Town”: As we assembled the cast from across the community of actors and non-actors alike, I asked my son, Chris, to take the lead role of Stage Manager. I’ve cast myself as Mrs. Soames, the town gossip who dispenses platitudes during the wedding scene (“The important thing is to be happy!”) and I am currently coaxing my 17-year-old grandson to make a brief cameo as a rude baseball player so that, for a moment, there will be three generations of McAneny Volls in this particular play.
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve roughed in the basic blocking for “Our Town,” and we’re beginning to polish the acting, organize costumes, set up lights and create the (intentionally spare) set. Grover’s Corners is coming to life.
“So—people a thousand years from now—this is the way we were in the provinces North of New York at the beginning of the Twentieth Century—this is the way we were—in our growing up and in our marrying, and in our living, and in our dying.”
And tomorrow, with new eyes, may we all see what we’re really living—every, every minute of it.
Nancy Voll
What we’re enjoying
Trudi
I’m blessed to live near and spend a lot of weekend time with my one-month-old darling little niece, Eden. Of course, I try to help my sister out with some housework, or give her and her husband a brief moment of relaxation while I read stories to their 3 and 6-year-old sons. My reward is to hold their tiny little daughter.
It’s something incomparable, to cradle a tiny baby in your hands and gaze at a brand-new little face. She is a precious gift, helpless, innocent, delicate, and oh so loved. As Eberhard Arnold once said “Every child is a thought in the mind of God.” I love that. Each of us, His creation, His loving thought. No matter what circumstances bring us into the world or take us out, our souls belong to God.
So I’m enjoying slowing down, and spending time just holding that little girl. Today I did some hand photography: my big hand, Eden’s tiny one. Incredible.
Norann
I love what my rug means: it’s a “place of peace” for young neighbors who need a break from their high energy families. Any parents near us who are in the trenches of little-kid parenting know that they can send their kids over almost anytime for quiet-time. It’s a bit of a sanctuary with a toybox, some Lego, a sweet pupper, and a long-suffering husband who quotes “Good-night Moon” to youngsters in need of a break by inspiring them to be that old lady “whispering hush.”
Marianne
We’re simply enjoying summer.
That’s all for now folks. Enjoy the season you’re in.
Sweet. Thank you.
A season for everything including, in a New York summer, heat, humidity and some fierce rainstorms. Very tropical.
Belated Happy Birthday to Mrs. Voll.