Laying Bare "the Pretense Of Theatre"

As a leading American novelist and dramatist in the early 20 th century,Thornton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his masterpiece Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.The dramatic techniques used in the two plays are full of avant-garde color,manifesting strong metatheatrical characteristics.The metatheatrical stage constructed by the two plays breaks the “fourth wall” of realism and subverts the traditional relationship between actors/actresses and the audience.From Wilder’s perspective,theatre is full of pretense,and the actors are endowed with strong self-consciousness and subjective initiative.From the playwright himself to his drama characters,from the dramatic texts to their stage productions,the representation of self-consciousness has become the focus of Wilder’s dramatic experiments.Combining Lionel Abel’s and Richard Hornby’s theory of metatheatre,this thesis tries to make a new metatheatrical interpretation of Wilder’s two plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.It includes self-consciousness of certain actors,role-playing within the role,metatheatrical performance,and ceremony as “play within the play” on the spectacles of play in the two plays.Moreover,literary references and real-life references are also discussed.It is found that the use of metatheatrical skills blurs the boundaries between theatre and reality,the inner play and outer play,and the defamiliarization effect brought to the audience is exactly what Thornton Wilder wants to emphasize in his dramaturgy.Furthermore,Wilder’s plays reflect the drama itself,with the aim of arousing the reflection of the audience by exposing the pretense of theatre.Moreover,Wilder’s dramatic thoughts find good expression in his metatheatrical experiments,arriving at a fruitful exploration of human existence,and at the same time exposing the sophisticated relationship between dramatic art and reality,culture and history.