Illinois State University School of Theatre and Dance presents Middletown by Will Eno. The performances will take place in Westhoff Theatre at 7:30 p.m. October 7-8 and 12-15, and at 2 p.m. October 9.
The second production in the School of Theatre and Dance’s fall 2022 lineup is a contemporary piece of literature by American author Will Eno, from Massachusetts. Middletown was first produced in New York City in 2010, then the next year at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. If this seems random, it is not. Eno’s play deals with themes well-suited to both New England and the Midwest, advancing a tradition of American literature that has long been tied to both regions while securing its place within that tradition.
Middletown is consciously modeled off one of the first “classics” in the American theatrical repertoire—Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. Set in the fictional small town of Grover’s Corner, Massachusetts, Our Town dramatizes daily life and the cycle of life in the average American town. The names for the three acts bear out this focus—“Daily Life,” “Love and Marriage,” “Death and Eternity.” These remind one of the table of contents in Robert and Helen Merrell Lynd’s Middletown studies, a classic of American sociology—“Getting a Living,” “Making a Home,” “Training the Young,” and so on. Based on research done in Muncie, Indiana, the Lynds’ study helped to promulgate ideas about small-town or “middle” America that remain to this day.
Eno’s Middletown takes these two classics of American literature as its source material, yet it distinguishes itself from them in important ways. The vision of a small, enclosed town where everybody has known everybody else since birth—and perhaps more importantly, which nobody ever leaves—is a bit of an anachronism in the 21st century, when the requirements of the modern job market force people to constantly relocate. As a result, Middletown’s main characters are marginal to the town, not central to it as in Our Town. And unlike the characters of Our Town, who felt ungrateful for (and often bored by) the relationships they were routinely submerged in, the characters of Middletown have few relationships to rely on. They struggle to connect with one another. They are somewhat anonymous; several characters are not privileged with a name. Their ailment is not banality but rootlessness. This is dramatized in the play by a trip to outer space—the most extreme expression of the individual untied to any plot of land.
This may explain the existential dimension of the play that the play’s director, Derek Munson, assistant professor of theatre studies, finds fascinating. Munson shared his thoughts on the script, its lessons, and the relevance for contemporary audiences.
How would you describe the play?
Well, it’s contemporary, it’s episodic, Brechtian. … There’s some Thornton Wilder, Samuel Beckett (who is perhaps the most well-known existential playwright), Lanford Wilson. … It’s driven by language and dialogue. It’s very meta.
What themes draw you to this piece?
It is very existential. … It asks questions such as ‘Why am I alive? What is the purpose of life?’
The attitude that Middletown takes towards the mystery of life is curious. On the one hand, science plays a large role; in the first act, we see the earth from far above—from outer space—made possible by innovations in space travel, and in the second act, we spend most of our time at a local hospital, faced with the biological facts of birth and death. Science provides a “vantage point of looking down,” in Munson’s brilliant phrase, providing us a glimpse of “just how small and precious the planet is.” Yet the mystery, in many ways, remains unsolved.
Ultimately, it is a play that is about how we come together, sometimes collide, and then we go apart. It is very unusual because it’s about people who don’t know each other very well. It’s a play about acquaintances, people trying to survive this crazy thing called life.
Why this play now?
It is relevant in that it is about so many problems of things we’ve dealt with in 21st century—addiction, mental illness, lack of empathy. … It’s topical, but timeless. Many of these actors haven’t gone through the things that the characters have … but the emotions are there. The emotions are universal. There is a vulnerability and a brutal honesty with this play. Will Eno has written characters who do not lie, which is so refreshing because in so many contemporary dramas everybody’s lying. There’s no edit button. If it comes into their head, they say it.
The moral center of Middletown is its “utopian ideal of humanity,” if we were all to be honest with each other and accepting of that honesty. I think that’s where the Thornton Wilder comes in … what Emily (main character in Our Town) says, ‘Do we ever notice how special everything is?’ We don’t listen to each other, we don’t hear each other. … This is another thing that Eno has borrowed—life and death, birth and death, cycle of life, and life goes on.
Tickets for Middletown can be purchased in person at the Center for the Performing Arts Box Office on the campus of Illinois State University by calling (309) 438-2535 or through this website.
If you need an accommodation to fully participate in this program/event, call the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts Box Office at (309) 438-2535. Please allow sufficient time to arrange the accommodation.
