The Thornton Wilder Society Newsletter
Notes from the End of the World:
A Dramaturg Reports on a Production of The Skin of Our Teeth
By Mark Blankenship
Any play with three apocalypses, talking dinosaurs, and characters who refuse to say their lines is clearly aiming high. But when that play has a housemaid tell us in her opening speech that it will address all "the troubles the human race has gone through," it may seem destined for ambitious failure. The Skin of Our Teeth, however, succeeds. A vast, symbolic play about all of humanity, Thornton Wilder's masterpiece is also a witty, compassionate look at the struggles of a single family. Sure, the Antrobus clan (whose name derives from the Greek for "humanity") may weather the calamities of ices ages, floods, and wars, but they also face the struggle of raising children, going to work, and trying to stay faithful for five thousand years. With staggering imagination, Wilder reminds us that the destruction and rebirth on his stage take their shape from the cycle of our own lives. It's no accident that Sabina, the saucy housemaid who directly addresses us with her analysis of the play, closes by insisting, "We have to go on for ages and ages yet." Onstage or off, she's telling us, we're all enduring the same old thing.
The point, of course, is that we keep going. Though humanity may get trapped in self-destructive cycles, ours is not a hopeless world. In his journal Wilder commented that he wanted The Skin of Our Teeth to "offer the audience [an] explanation of man's endurance, aim, and consolation." He understood that many who sought that explanation would begin and end with the presence of the divine. "It's not so much that I deny the religious note," he said, "as that it presents itself to me only intermittently and in terms too individualistic to enter the framework of this place." Therefore, while the religious note is certainly sounded (especially through the omniscient Fortune Teller in Act II and consistent Biblical imagery), the play finds its solution in the cause of its problems: humanity itself. "The existence of his children and the inventive activity of his mind keep urging [man] on to continued and better-adjusted survival," Wilder wrote, "[while] the ideas contained in the great books of his predecessors hang above him in mid-air, furnishing him adequate direction and stimulation." This was his explanation for why we persist: even as we see our talent for destruction, we don't forget our ability to think and do wonderful things.
Director Kara-Lynn Vaeni and I have long been enthralled by The Skin of Our Teeth and its ultimate claims about humanity. As we prepare our production at the Yale School of Drama, we are thrilled by the challenge of staging Wilder's vision. Though as of this writing we are still two weeks from beginning rehearsal, we are already guided by the playwright's own concerns. Fearful of " 'making up' emotion [or] contriving earnestness," for example, he strove to write in the proper tone—which he described as a blend of "the comic, the grotesque, and the myth as mock heroic"—and we are similarly dedicated to letting this towering work remain a comedy. We are also mindful of the playwright's following journal entry: "This being the most ambitious subject I have ever approached, I am faced as never consciously before with the question: do I mean it?" With that, Wilder challenged himself to fully believe in all of the ideas his play was presenting. Ultimately, he answered his own query with a "yes," and it is our mission to be certain we can do the same.
In asking ourselves if we "mean it"—if we can stand behind all the conclusions our production suggests—Kara-Lynn and I have begun challenging certain elements of Wilder's script. We live with problems and achievements he could not have predicted, and we want his still-relevant play to address them. Therefore, in deference to Wilder's own conclusion that ideas are the cornerstone of human survival, we are considering several changes to the text that will make room for the modern world.
At present, our most significant amendments may occur in Act III, which opens at the end of a great war. The script calls for the Antrobus living room of Act I to be recreated, only with some of the walls missing or leaning "helter skelter." Things return to normal, however, when Sabina pulls an onstage rope that sets the walls in place. Finally, once the entire family observes the procession of great ideas, a character says, "Let there be light." After a brief blackout, the play starts over, with no changes. But is that feasible? Humanity may operate in a cycle, but don't we occasionally alter our routine? Our production team feels that we do. Nuclear war, the environmental crisis, and the women's and civil rights movements are just a few of the reasons we are not living as before, no matter how much we see ourselves in the past. As artists, we are asking difficult questions about how these changes impact the play. What is the present-day implication, for example, of a stage that sinks into darkness after someone calls for light? Should it remind us of how close our own inventions have brought us to destruction? More importantly, can the Antrobuses return to their pleasant home, or should the stage bear the scars of all that has occurred? When the play begins anew, how stable are the walls that keep out the world?
We are also questioning whether everyone in the family would willingly start over. What would happen if a character revolted against her station? Consider Gladys: she exists primarily to pacify her father with kindness, terrify her mother with burgeoning sexuality, and propagate the race with babies. However, while women still wrestle with questions of sexuality and procreation, they have an unparalleled freedom to disavow what is expected of them. Couldn't Gladys represent this freedom? Even as she adopts the traditional mother role, couldn't she also assert her independence?
Such independence is crucial in arguing that humanity's patterns can alter. Our production rests on this notion—the belief that just as our capacity for destruction keeps growing, so does our ability to find renewal. As we discover ways to address our convictions onstage, we hope to honor The Skin of Our Teeth by approaching it with fresh ideas.
©2003 Thornton Wilder Society