Nothing New

Corners Grove is a play that has nothing new to say–and that's the point. Corners Grove is a modern play that pays homage to the American classic Our Town.

Our Town is a play about what it means to live a life. It is a hard thing to comment on the human experience. Humans are messy and the world is big. Stories are comparatively neat and rather small. Thornton Wilder knew this and his play is told not in the arc of a story but in the arc of lives. What is presented is normal people’s lives as they live them. The play follows them as they grow up, work, gossip, marry, die, and mourn. He aims for realism and typicality. To create such verisimilitude, he delves deep into the setting. Our Town is set in a small New Hampshire town near the turn of the 20th century. Corners Grove is set in a small California town near the turn of the 21st century. Corners Grove takes heavy inspiration from Our Town. Many of the same story beats are repeated and the basic structure is kept. Act 1 is about the young cast growing up. Act 2 involves a marriage. Act 3 depicts a funeral for someone who died too young. The details differ, but the broad strokes are the same.

I remember reading Our Town in eighth grade English. I remember how foreign it seemed. Sure it had interesting things to say but how am I supposed to relate to this century old play? As I watched Corners Grove, despite being more recent, it somehow felt even more distant. Corners Grove commits even harder to its time period from the costumes designed by Nathan Blažek to the music, to the mentions of Facebook's young user base, it was written to reflect the time it is set in quite well. It was glaringly clear that these were someone else's cultural touchpoints and just off from my own generation.

At the end of the second act, the character of the stage manager played by Rain Parker narrates: “Nothing is ever new and yet no one has ever felt the way I have felt.” It is a bit on the nose but that line struck me deep. This idea that nothing is new is seen in the set design by Andrea Imsland as well. It resembles an attic with discarded furniture that fades into the walls in a way reminiscent of the recent movie Backrooms. All sorts of old memories can be found in an attic. Corners Grove is like a relic in an attic. A reflection of something old found new. A fresh take on a classic.

I’m not sure why it annoyed me so much initially that the setting felt distant. I suppose that when I heard that I was seeing a modern retelling, I hoped it would be more current and relate to my generation. I obviously missed the point with my initial annoyance. It doesn’t matter when or where a story is told. Corners Grove reminds us that life isn’t new. Death isn’t new. Marriage and War aren’t new. Questions on gender and sexuality aren’t new. Joy and suffering aren’t new. Our lives are new. Live your life and bear witness to the lives that have been lived.