Read the beginning of a play and decide whether you would

Read the beginning of a play and decide whether you would like to know what happened next. OUR TOWN An extract from a play by Thornton Wilder ACT ONE No curtain. No scenery. The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light. Presently the STAGE MANAGER, hat on and pipe in mouth, enters and begins placing a table and three chairs downstage left, and a table and three chairs downstage right. He also places a low bench at the corner of what will be the Webb house, left. Leftquot; and rightquot; are from the point of view of the actor facing the audience. Upquot; is toward the back wall. As the house lights go down he has finished setting the stage and leaning against the light proscenium pillar watches the audience. When the auditorium is in complete darkness he speaks. STAGE MANAGER: This play is called Our Town. It was written by Thornton Wilder; produced and directed by A . (...) In it you see Miss C ; Miss D ; Miss E ; and Mr F ; Mr G ; Mr H and many others. The name of the town is Grover39;s Corners, New Hampshire just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The first act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn. (A rooster crows.) The sky is beginning to show some streaks of light over in the East there, behind our mountin. The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go doesnt it? (He stares at it for a moment, when goes upstage.) Well, Id better show you how our town lies. Up here (That is, parallel with the back wall.) is Main Street. Way back there is the railway station; tracks go that way. Polish Towns across the tracks, and some Canuck families. (Toward the left.) Over there is the Congregational Church; across the streets the Presbyterian. Methodist and Unitarian are over there. Baptist is down in the holla39; by the river. Catholic Church is over beyond the tracks. Here39;s Town Hall and Post Office combined; jail39;s in the basement. Bryan once made a speech from these very steps here. Along heres a row of stores. Hitching posts and horse blocks in front of them. First automobile39;s going to come along in about five years belonged to Banker Cartwright, our richest citizen... lives in the big white house up on the hill. Heres the grocery store and heres Me. Morgans drugstore. Most everybody in town manages to look into those two stores once a day. Public schools over yonder. High schools still farther over. Quarter of nine mornings, noontimes, and three o39;clock afternoons, the hull town can hear the yelling and screaming from those schoolyards. (He approaches the table and chairs downstage right.) This is doctor39;s house Doc Gibbs. This is the back door. (Two arched trellises, covered with vines and flowers, are pushed out, one by each proscenium pillar.) There is some scenery for those who think they have to have scenery. This is Mrs Gibb39;s garden. Corn... peas... beans... hollyhocks, heliotrope... and a lot of burdock. (Crosses the stage.) In those days our newspapers come out twice a week The Grovers Corners Sentinel and this is Editor Webbs house. And this is Mrs Webbs garden. Just like Mrs Gibbss, only its got a lot of sunflowers, too. (He looks upward, center stage.) Right here ...s a big butternut tree. (He returns to his place by the right proscenium pillar and looks at the audience for a minute.) Nice town, y39;know what I mean? Nobody very remarkable ever come out of it, s39;far as we know. The earliest tombstones in the cemetery up there on the mountain say 1670, 1680 they39;re Grovers and Cartwrights and Gibbses and Herseys same names as are here now. Well, as I said: it39;s about dawn. The only lights on in town are in the cottage over by the tracks, where a Polish mothers just had twins. And in the Joe Crowell house, where Joe Juniors getting up so as to deliver the paper. And in the depot, where Shorty Hawkins is gettin39; ready to flag the 5:45 Boston. (A train whistle is heard. The STAGE MANAGER takes out his watch and nods.) Naturally, out in the country all around thereve been lights on for some time, what with milkins and so on. But town people sleep late. So another days begun. Theres Doc Gibbss coming down Main Street now, cornin39; back from that baby case. And heres his wife cornin downstairs to get breakfast. (Mrs GIBBS, a plump, pleasant woman in the middle thirties, comes downstairs right. She pulls up an imaginary window shade in her kitchen and starts to make a fire in her stove.) Doc Gibbs died in 1930. The new hospitals named after him. Mrs Gibbs died first long time ago, in fact. She went out to visit her daughter, Rebecca, who married an insurance man in Canton, Ohio, and died there pneumonia but her body was brought back here. Shes up in the cemetery there now in with a whole mess of Gibbses and Herseys she was Julia Hersey fore she married Doc Gibbs in the Congregational Church over there. In our town we like to know the facts about everybody. Theres Mrs Webb, coming downstairs to get her breakfast, too That39;s Doc Gibbs. Got that call half past one this morning. And there comes Joe Crowell, Jr., delivering Mr Webbs Sentinel.