It took seven years, but finally Words Players are about to achieve their goal of staging all of Thornton Wilder's published short plays.
That goal will be completed this weekend when the seventh annual Thornton Wilder Short Play Festival opens. Seven plays, including the final three previously unstaged plays, will be presented Friday and Saturday and March 30-31. There will also be a day-long symposium devoted to Wilder March 31.
Wilder was a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner whose most famous plays are the full-length "Our Town" and "The Skin of Our Teeth" and the reworked "The Matchmaker," which eventually became "Hello, Dolly!"
The symposium will feature a look at one of Wilder's essays, "Thoughts on Playwriting," play readings and a preview of a new Wilder biography by Penelope Niven. The book is due to be released in October, but galley proofs will be available for perusal at the symposium.
The symposium and play performances will be held in the cafe-like atmosphere of the partially renovated Words Players Theatre.
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The short plays to be staged this year are: "Christmas Interlude I," "Christmas Interlude II," "The Flight into Egypt," "The Long Christmas Dinner," "In Shakespeare and the Bible," "And the Servant's Name was Malchus" and "Has Thou Considered My Servant Job."
