To close out the school year, Broken Box will take the stage for their final production, Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” running Thursday through Saturday, at 7 p.m. each night.
“This one makes you question your life,” assistant director senior Aditya Rajesh said. “It’s about stuff you don’t think about often, like the passage of time and what it means to have a fulfilling life.”
“Our Town” follows the residents of Grover’s Corners as they navigate life’s small but meaningful moments. It’s performed in three distinct acts: “Daily Life,” “Love and Marriage” and “Death and Remembrance” — a sharp shift from Broken Box’s previous lighthearted performances.
A narrator called the “Stage Manager” — played by seniors Abigail Andrade, Jason Byrne and junior Sam Hiltgen — guides the story, both speaking directly to the audience and interacting with the characters, breaking theater’s typical “third wall.”
With a minimalistic set and driven more by actors’ stage presence, “Our Town” builds character development through each act. Because multiple actors were cast for the same roles — the Stage Manager and central character Emily Webb — each performer brings a distinct perspective to their character. Many actors also play a number of different roles.
“It gets a little more serious as the show goes on,” senior Jason Byrne, who plays Daily Life’s Stage Manager, said.
Director Lisa Battle said the play contains rich subtext; the emotional weight of each performance relies on the deeper meanings of lines.
Aditya added that one of the play’s central characters, Emily Webb, and her partner sit in a soda shop and discuss their futures. While seemingly straightforward, this scene requires a detail-oriented performance as the actors must highlight the emotional heaviness, according to Aditya.
Senior Nora Saraci-Alonso, who plays young Emily in act one, said she portrays the character as a bright schoolgirl. The role is handed off to seniors Sarah Ardelean and Kira Polen in acts two and three respectively, as Emily falls in love and comes of age. Each transition between the Emilys is facilitated with the physical action of passing on a zip-up jacket directly to the next, marking the passage of time in a single movement.
“‘Our Town’ is a lot of analyzing very complex relationships between the different characters,” Jason said. “This is the show with the least amount of time [to prepare], but is the most emotionally complex.”
Beyond the depth of the play itself, Nora, as a senior, described their final production of the season as bittersweet.
“It’s kind of serendipitous because I’m graduating high school, and I’m playing a 12-year-old,” Nora said. “And when we get to the end of rehearsals and actually get to the show, everyone’s just really sad, like, ‘Why did this have to go by so fast?’”
“Our Town” runs Thursday through Saturday, April 23-25, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for general admission, available online and at the door.
