Monadnock Ledger Transcript – Cast of ‘Our Town’ Comes to Peterborough

Katie Holmes, Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutch, Ephraim Sykes, Richard Thomas and director Kenny Leon, along with the rest of the cast of the Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, held their first reading at MacDowell’s Bond Hall.

The cast and ensemble were searching for the inspiration that drove Wilder, a nine-time fellow at MacDowell, as he completed the Pulitzer Prize-winning work in MacDowell’s Veltin Studio, setting the play in Grover’s Corners, a fictional town inspired by Peterborough.

“It means something to see where he wrote the play,” Julie Halston, who plays Mrs. Soames in the production, told Town & Country. “He was in [MacDowell] nine times, and he finished the piece in this little studio cottage, and it reminded all of us that art is not easy. Art requires work, art requires reflection. I’m about as spiritual as my coffee cup, but it was very spiritual. When we were in a different environment, smelling that air, seeing the birds, hearing those sounds, we realized, “Oh, this is what Wilder wants us to be aware of.”

The revival of “Our Town” is scheduled to begin September 17 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.