Missing Pieces and Broken Patterns: A Dramaturgical Study of Thornton Wilder's
The Emporium
Bonnie Georgette Hamlett
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BONNIE GEORGETTE HAMLETT is a dramaturg based in Greensboro, NC. She works as the Performing Arts Director for the High Point Friends School, and is currently serving remotely as a dramaturgy apprentice for the New Jersey Play Lab. Georgette has presented research at the National Women’s Theatre Festival, the Mid-Atlantic Theatre Festival, and the International Thornton Wilder Conference. An avid Wilder enthusiast, two of her papers have been published in the Thornton Wilder Journal. Georgette received her Master’s degree in Theatre Studies from Montclair State University. She also holds a Bachelor’s of English from Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. As a queer woman from Appalachia, Georgette is passionate about the push for greater arts accessibility in the South, and countering negative, non-diverse portrayals of the region. Her research interests include theatrical narrators, audience interaction, metatheatricality, and horror theatre.
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Abstract
As an incomplete play, Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium offers a unique dramaturgical challenge. Since the ‘80s, The Emporium has been available to us in only four select scenes in varying degrees of interconnected character and plot throughlines. Historical research indicates that these four scenes, though available for purchase, have never been staged in original form in production, and the play itself has largely been dismissed from academic consideration. But even unfinished, The Emporium gives a brief glimpse into the creative mind and genius of one of the great American playwrights. Demonstrative from his other, more distinguished work – Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth – Wilder was no stranger to the complexities of metatheatre, and The Emporium is no exception. Pushing the bounds of metatheatricality and character-audience engagement, Wilder’s unfinished play teases perhaps the most complicated theatrical experiment of his career; complicated enough that Wilder ultimately abandoned it leaving us with just a few pages. This article seeks to explore the theoretical question of producing an incomplete text: what are the structural concerns and is a dramaturgically-successful performance of The Emporium even possible?
As an incomplete play, Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium offers a unique dramaturgical challenge. Since the ‘80s, The Emporium has been available to us in only four select scenes in varying degrees of interconnected character and plot throughlines. Historical research indicates that these four scenes, though available for purchase, have never been staged in original form in production, and the play itself has largely been dismissed from academic consideration. But even unfinished, The Emporium gives a brief glimpse into the creative mind and genius of one of the great American playwrights. Demonstrative from his other, more distinguished work – Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth – Wilder was no stranger to the complexities of metatheatre, and The Emporium is no exception. Pushing the bounds of metatheatricality and character-audience engagement, Wilder’s unfinished play teases perhaps the most complicated theatrical experiment of his career; complicated enough that Wilder ultimately abandoned it leaving us with just a few pages. This article seeks to explore the theoretical question of producing an incomplete text: what are the structural concerns and is a dramaturgically-successful performance of The Emporium even possible?
| etudesdec2022hamlett.pdf |
