featuring Broadway star Anne Runolffson and local shoreline talent to play in “our town” of Branford

August 4-9 at 7pm

Behind the Branford Town Hall
Free to the Public

Our Town is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.

Thornton Niven Wilder Chronology  

1897: Born in Madison, Wisconsin (April 17)

1906: Moves to Hong Kong in May and to Berkeley, California in October

1906-10: Emerson Public School in Berkeley 

1910-11: China Inland Mission School, Chefoo, China (one year)

1912-13: Thacher School, Ojai, California (one year). First play known to be produced: The Russian Princess

1915: Graduates from Berkeley High School; active in school dramatics

1915-17: Oberlin College; published regularly

1920: B.A. Yale College (3-month service in 1918 with U.S. Army in 1918); many publications

1920-21: American Academy in Rome (8-month residency)

1920s: French teacher at Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey (’21-’25 & ’27-’28)

1924: First visit to the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire

1926: M.A. in French literature, Princeton University / The Trumpet Shall Sound produced off-Broadway (American Laboratory Theatre) / The Cabala (first novel)

1927: The Bridge of San Luis Rey (novel- Pulitzer Prize)

1928: The Angel That Troubled The Waters (first published collection of drama—playlets)

1930s: Part-time faculty, University of Chicago (comparative literature and composition); lectures across the country; first Hollywood screen-writing  assignment  (1934); extensive foreign travel

1930: The Woman of Andros (novel) / Completion of home for his family and himself in Hamden, Connecticut

1931: The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays (six one-act plays)

1932: Lucrece opens on Broadway staring Katharine Cornell (translation of André Obey’s Le Viol de Lucrèce)

1935: Heaven’s My Destination (novel)                                 

1937: A Doll’s House (adaptation/ trans.) opens on Broadway with Ruth Gordon

1938: Our Town (Pulitzer Prize) and The Merchant of Yonkers open on Broadway

1942: The Skin of Our Teeth opens on Broadway (Pulitzer Prize) / Screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Shadow of a Doubt

1942-45: Service with Army Air Force in North Africa and Italy (Lieut. Col. at discharge –Bronze Star and O.B.E.)

1948: The Ides of March (novel); performing in his plays in summer stock in this period / The Victors opens off-Broadway (translation of Sartre’s Morts sans sépulture)

1949: Major role in Goethe Convocation in Aspen; lectures widely.

1951-52: Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard

1952: Gold Medal for Fiction, American Academy of Arts and Letters

1953: Cover of Time Magazine (January 12)

1955: The Matchmaker opens on Broadway staring Ruth Gordon / The Alcestiad produced at Edinburgh Festival with Irene Worth (as A Life in the Sun)

1957: German Peace Prize

1961: Libretto for The Long Christmas Dinner (music by Paul Hindemith—premieres in Mannheim, West  Germany)

1962: “Plays for Bleecker Street” (Someone from Assisi, Infancy, and Childhood) premiere at  NYC’s Circle in the Square / Libretto for The Alcestiad (music by Louise Talma—premieres  in Frankfurt, West Germany)

1963: Presidential Medal of Freedom

1964: Hello, Dolly!  starring Carol Channing opens on Broadway

1965: National Book Committee’s Medal for Literature

1967: The Eighth Day (National Book Award for Fiction)

1973: Theophilus North (novel)

1975: Dies in sleep in Hamden, CT on December 7. Buried at Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Hamden, Connecticut 

For more information, please visit www.thorntonwilder.com and www.thorntonwildersociety.org.