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A Production Study of Thornton Wilder's the Skin of Our Teeth

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A Production Study of Thornton Wilder's the Skin of Our Teeth Eastern Illinois University The Keep Masters Theses Student Theses & Publications 1973 A Production Study of Thornton Wilder's The kS in of Our Teeth Le Hook Eastern Illinois University Recommended Citation Hook, Le, "A Production Study of Thornton Wilder's The kS in of Our Teeth" (1973). Masters Theses. 3826. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/3826 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses & Publications at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PAPER CERTIFICATE #2 TO: Graduate Degree Candidates who have written formal theses. SUBJECT: Permission to reproduce theses. The University Library is receiving a number of requests from other institutions asking permission to reproduce dissertations for inclusion in their library holdings. Although no copyright laws are involved, we feel that professional courtesy demands that permission be obtained from the author before we allow theses to be copied. Please sign one of the following statements: Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University has my permission to lend my thesis to a reputable college or university for the purpose of copying it for inclusion in that institution's library or research holdings. __tl:4fj__,..._3_,L_/_f._7_.:.. ?_- _ Date I respectfully request Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University not allow my thesis be reproduced because��- Date Author pdm A PRODUCTION STUDY OF THORNTON WILDER'S THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH (TITLE) BY LE HOOK .,. THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Science in Education IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL, EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 1973 YEAR HEREBY RECOMMEND THIS THESIS BE ACCEPTED FULFILLING I AS THIS PART OF THE GRADUATE DEGREE CITED ABOVE \!175 DATE TABU OF CONTti:NTS l'age PRF.FACE • • .. .. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 111 Ll�T OF ILLUS TilATI ONS • • • • • • • • • • • • •· xvi ACT I • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • l ACT • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .. II 22 ACT III • • • • • • • • • • • .. • • • • • • • • • • .. • • • • u5 BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .. • • • • .. • 62 APPiNDIXJi:S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • .. .. • .. • • .. • 6J PREFACE This thesis is a production study of Thornton Wilder 's play The Skin .2!_ Our Teeth, which was produced at Cerro Gordo High School, May 19 and 20, 1973. This study will include a critical analysis of the play itself as well as the production book including all of the elements of the production. In order to analyze The Skin of Our Teeth, it is necessary to understand Thornton Wilder 's philosophy and what he was after in all of his playwriting and this play in particular. Writing in the preface to Three Plays �Thornton Wilder, he said, Every action which has ever taken place--every thought, every emotion--has taken place only once, at one moment in time and place. 'I love you,' 'I rejoice,' 'I suffer, ' have been said and felt many billions of times , and never twice. Every person who has ever lived has lived on unbroken success ion of unique experience the more one becomes attentive to what these disparate moments have in common, to repetitive patterns . As an art (or listener or beholder) which 'truth' do you prefer-- that of the isolated occasion, or that which includes and resumes the innumberable? The theatre is admirably fitted to tell both truths . It has one foot planted firmly in the partic- ular, since each actor before us is indub itably a living, breathing 'one'; yet it tends and strains to exhibit a general truth • It is through the theatre 's power to raise the exhibited individual action into the realm of idea ·and type and universal that it is able to evoke our belief When emphasize place in the theatre, you. drag down and limit and harness time to it. You thrust the action back into pa•t time, whereas it is precisely the glory of the stage that it is always 'now ' there • • • You don't have to pay. deeply from your hearts participation.I It is evident from these general comments that the basic idea of Wilder 's work is to assist the audience in applying their own experience in understanding the specific themes which he develops in his plays . This iii allows'them to take their own unique , one time experiences and apply them to the experiences being portrayed on the state. The play, John Gassner said is perhaps the best out-and-out theatricali�t work of the American theatricalist work of the American theatre. Wilder wrote The Skin of Our Teeth begins , also, by making fun of old fashioned playwriting; but the audience soon percieves that he is seeing 'two times at once .' The Antrobus family is living both in prehistoric times and in a New Jersey commuters ' suburb today. Again, the events of our home ly daily-life • • are depicted against the vast dimensions of time and place. 3 He wrote in comparison of his two Pulitzer Prize winning plays that Our Town is the life of the family seen from a telescope five miles away. The Skin of Our Teeth is the destiny of the whole human '� group s� from ;-telescope 1,000 miles away . He definitely felt that all important truths are inside everyone waiting a novel . or play to awaken them. One of the first elements to consider in the analysis of any play is the theme and the theme in � Skin of Our Teeth is expressed in the title of the play. The human race has the ability to survive, although the world will often seem to conspire against the race and the survival will be by the slimest of margins . Because man has this ability he must not be discouraged from continuing to survive of from pursuing intellectual development. In The Skin of Our Teeth Wilder has used a presentational technique which allows the audience to become involved with the specific characters and their personal problems while realizing that they also serve as representatives of the whole human race. This dual aspect of the characters is emphasized by the way they drop their stage roles and become the actors who are appearing in a play. iv The main· characters are George and Maggie Antrobus ; their ma id, Sabina ; and their children, Henry and Gladys. George Antrobus is Adam, the father of the race, and the typical American businessman, who rejoices in the invention of the alphabet and the wheel. He has the virtues and the weaknesses of the entire human race. His basic drive is to preserve and increase human knowledge and he does not seem to change throughout history. He is man as an intellectual, always on the verge of a disaster, always surviving by the "skin of his teeth." Maggie Antrobus represents Eve, the eternal mother and homemaker. There are two things which serve as her driving force. The first of these is her love for her children and the other is her desire to keep the family and the home intact. She represents the instinctual and anti-intellectual forces in the human race. ·Sabina represents the sensual quality taking care the desires of man. She is Lilith, the eternal wicked woman , but she also represents the comic aspect of humanity. In this way she helps to underscore Wilder 's comic viewpoint in this play. Both as actress, Miss Somerset, who plays Sabina , she represents an anti-intellectual force. Her main drive appears to be self-gratification. Of the two children, Henry (or Ca in) is the most important, although Gladys does represent youthful innocence, which reaches maturity by the end of the play. Henry represents the conflict within man, and proof that he will never be able to reach perfectiop. Thus the major conflicts of the play are set in motion. George conflicts with Maggie over the preservation of knowledge versus the preservation of the family. They also conflict over Sabina which sets up another conflict between Sabina and Maggie. Henry is in conflict with v everyone and Gladys conflicts with her mother on typical adolescent problems but she comes back to her mother's side versus Sabina. All of these conflicts are secondary to the conflict between the entire family and the outside forces which threaten �o engulf them. The first act represents the forces of nature in the form of the ice age. These forces are overcome by using common sense and courage. This act shows immediately that the past and present are being shown simul taneous ly. Sab ina begins the act which is inter- rupted by Mrs. Antrobus failing to answer her first cue. This- allows Sabina to drop her character and speak directly to the audience, establishing the theatricalness of the play. Al though the room is def{n.i:e-&ly that of a middle-class Ame rican family , a dinosaur and wooly maamoth appear and references to the approaching glacier are made throughout the act. At the end of the act Qeorge goes through a great struggle within himself in trying to decide whether the race is worthaaving when it contains the evil which he sees in Henry and the anti-intellectualism he sees in Maggie and Sabina . The act ends when he decides that there is much to be taught and the human race should go on. The flood or storm of the second act could be viewed as not just a natural phenomenon. "Apparently it is also a form of retributive 5 justice handed down by an unnamed power ." "The central symbols of the act are the bingo parlor and the fortune teller which signify, 6 respectively , chance and destiny.11 These two forces are in conflict throughout the act. The scene is a convention at Atlantic City.
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