Gabriella Osborn, Joseph Pallo, Molly Davis, Thea Jade Barbieto, and Tomitsela Engel-Halfkenny.
The stage managers stand beside a sprawling map of Grover’s Corners, ready to take the audience on a journey. At the center, there is the railroad, the station puffing clouds of smoke into the air. Then Main Street, winding its way past a handful of shops, their windows still dark. The two point out the churches by denomination, moving from the Presbyterians to the Methodists, onto the Unitarians, and then the Baptists and the Catholics. Their voices are a meditation.
Dawn is breaking. Soon, Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb will be at their stoves, making breakfast for their children. The sound of an old, tired dairy cow will clip-clop down the street, jars of milk clinking beside it. But for a moment, this could be New Haven, sunlight slanting over the New Haven Green before the wondrous chaos of the day.
In a performance that finds profound strength in its understatedness, students in the Legacy Studios Drama Club present Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, transforming the 1938 play into one that is both cemented in time and completely of this moment. As it comes to the stage this weekend, cast and crew members have made it entirely their own, driving home a reminder to savor the present before it is gone.
The play, directed by “drama poppa” Ty Scurry, runs Thursday through Sunday at New Haven Academy at 444 Orange St. in New Haven. Tickets and more information are available here. It is, perhaps poetically, the final show for seniors who helped build Legacy their freshman year.
In addition to NHA, there is representation from Wilbur Cross High School, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, Betsy Ross Arts & Design Academy, and Cooperative Arts & Humanities High Schools.