The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume II by Thornton Wilder

Author:Thornton Wilder [Wilder, Thornton; Wilder, A. Tappan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781559368148
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group

February 13, 1954

Well, nothing came of that walk into town. Then I went to New York.* Another lacuna in the play has been glaring me in the face: I haven’t found any way to express what it is in the G. and S. that has been attracting John. So far I have merely stated it in the shape of that he is puzzled by it: and that’s not enough. While I had the so-called dreamed episode, the former “Prologue,” I could convey sufficiently to the audience that he belonged there by divine inheritance. Now, I have nothing but Mrs. Graham’s assertion. So the elements I must bring up and coalesce are the magnet-pull, the Schaudern, and the audience seated on the stage.

I have been phantasizing long scenes in which the actress playing Bertha (ossia Bernice) recognizes among the actors-on-the-stage some old long-lost friend—or enemy. And some such thing may well develop, but the whole raison d’être of such an encounter must be that it illustrates an aspect of the Emporium; and also that it contributes to our matrix-form of repetitions. Say she recognizes Mrs. Frisbee (of the Veteran Department-Store Workers):

BERTHA: What are you doing here?! And what are you doing as an actress?

MRS. FRISBEE: They didn’t tell me this was about the Gillespie-Schwingemeister. Oh, I won’t stay a minute. I’m going right out to sit in the bus. The G. and S. killed my husband.

Then big fracas as she tries to draw all her companions out “to sit in the bus.” All that could work—but oh! I cannot, must not, place it there, at the Cleaning-Women’s Scene—can I? I’ll draw up some sketches and see.

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