"THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH" April 22 & 23, 2016 Fr. Frank Krische Student and Alumni Center
CAST Mr. George Antrobus - Jake Bernard* Mrs. Antrobus - Mollie McClanahan* Henry - Braden Purcell Gladys - Kendall Rees* Sabina - Madelynn Kurtz* Fitzpatrick - Trevor Schoenhofer* Announcer - Dalton Frantz* Dinosaur - Dylan Legleiter* Mammoth - James Nioce Telegraph Boy - Danny Madsen* Fortune Teller – Alli Sheetz* Broadcast Official - Dalton Frantz* Refugees, Chairpushers, Conventioneers and Other Roles Dalton Frantz*, Dylan Legleiter*, Danny Madsen*, James Nioce, Alli Sheetz*
PRODUCTION STAFF Mark Radziejeski - Director/Designer
* denotes member of Hayden Thespians, Troupe #7275
A PLAY ABOUT THE ENDURING NATURE OF FAMILY Meet George and Maggie Antrobus of Excelsior, New Jersey, a suburban, commuter-town couple (married for 5,000 years), who bear more than a casual resemblance to that first husband and wife, Adam and Eve: the two Antrobus children, Gladys (perfect in every way, of course) and Henry (who likes to throw rocks and was formerly known as Cain); and their garrulous maid, Sabina (the eternal seductress), who takes it upon herself to break out of character and interrupt the course of the drama at every opportunity ("I don't understand a word of this play!") Whether he is inventing the alphabet or merely saving the world from apocalypse, George and his redoubtable family somehow manage to survive--by the skin of their teeth. Completed by the author less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, The Skin of Our Teeth (1942) broke from established theatrical conventions and walked off with the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Combining farce, burlesque, and satire, and elements of the comic strip, Thornton Wilder depicts an Everyman Family as it narrowly escapes one end-of-the-world disaster after another, from the Ice Age to flood to war. ***
The phrase used as the title comes from the Holy Bible, Job 19:20: "My bones cling to my skin, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth." ***
A SHORT HISTORY LESSON When The Skin of Our Teeth premiered at the Plymouth Theater in New York on November 18, 1942, Americans had spent more than a decade with the fear that American democracy was doomed to failure. The Great Depression of the 1930's seemed to indicate to intellectuals and industrial workers that capitalism was fated to implode from its internal contradictions. World War II began on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. The United States entered the war after the Japanese navy destroyed most of the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. On opening night of the play, Germany controlled most of Europe, confronted only by British and Russian airmen and soldiers who were hanging on grimly against what seemed unbeatable German forces. America had been driven from the Philippines by Japanese troops, which controlled much of Asia. The world was on the brink of disaster.
The Skin of Our Teeth presents alternately seriously and comically that mankind has always been on the edge of catastrophe. The play illustrates the movement of human history not as linear, a steady advance of progress, but as cyclical, beginning with development, then catastrophe, and followed by the necessity to rebuild. Throughout this cyclical history, man is buoyed by the wisdom of the ages, the great books, which represent the best of what humanity has thought. The ideas of the philosophers and prophets supplying the knowledge and hope that enables people to go on and try again. The mechanism that keeps the cycle going is the family, the enduring part of human society, The play, directed by a young and inexperienced Elia Kazan and starring the tempestuous Tallulah Bankhead, was a success, running for 359 performances, Wilder's reputation was seriously damaged by an unsubstantiated accusation that he had plagiarized James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. Though the play does borrow some of its ideas from Joyce, Wilder declined to defend himself.
The Skin of Our Teeth is a tragi-comedy where the comedy is so broad it borders on farce. Wilder himself claimed that he got the idea for it when a rubber chicken flew off the stage and landed in his lap at a production of Hellzapoppin, the hit 1938 vaudeville review. The farcical element makes it possible for an audience to contemplate the most painful and difficult ideas by placing them in an absurd frame. Henry/Cain has killed his brother, but in a world of singing telegraph boys, where a maid is asked if she has milked the mammoth, fratricide is distanced enough so that the audience can respond with curiosity to the idea that Cain and Abel could easily be the story of two ordinary suburban boys who had a fight with tragic results.
Near the end of Act III of The Skin of Our Teeth, Mr. Antrobus says, "Oh, I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor edge of danger and must be fought for—whether it's a field, or a home, or a country." Just as the theater staff—the leading man's dresser, the star's maid, the head usher, the wardrobe mistress—in the theatrical tradition must take up unaccustomed roles because the show must go on, the audience is called on to take on heroic roles and "save the human race." Of course in World War II many men and women, including Wilder, left their homes and ordinary lives to do exactly that.