Premiering at Theatre Horizon in September 2022.
A large-scale play with music will draw on the varied stories of Norristown, PA’s residents as it challenges the myth of American small-town homogeneity. Using Thornton Wilder’s Our Town as a structural provocation, playwright Michael John Garcés and director Nell Bang-Jensen will create a work to be performed by both professional performers and “citizen artists,” with an original score sourced from the sounds of Norristown by artist collective ILL DOOTS. The lead artists will conduct public “story circles” with local residents, collecting personal stories to inform the piece’s script and lyrics while incorporating Our Town’s themes of daily life, love and marriage, and death and eternity. The free culminating performances will be staged in Norristown’s courthouse-adjacent Airy Street parking lot, a transient civic space that will serve as a site for public reassessment of Norristown’s image.
Funded by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
Playwright
Michael John Garcés
Director
Nell Bang-Jensen
Original Music
Ill Doots
Community Coordinator
Marisol Rosa-Shapiro
Dramaturg
Gilberto Vega
More information here: http://www.theatrehorizon.org/shows/ournorristown.php