Howard Sherman's ANOTHER DAY'S BEGUN, Thornton Wilder's OUR TOWN in the 21st Century, to be Published

A work of startling originality when it debuted in 1938, Thornton Wilder's Our Town evolved to become a vintage slice of early 20th-century Americana. This unique and timely book shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text for a world confronting multiple crises.

Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally - and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture - Another Day's Begun shows why the play remains so important, essential, and beloved.

Every production of Our Town has a story to tell beyond Wilder's own. One year after the tragedy of 9/11, Paul Newman, in his final stage appearance, played the Stage Manager in Our Town on Broadway. Director David Cromer's 2008 Chicago interpretation would play in five more cities, ultimately becoming New York's longest-running Our Town ever. In 2013, incarcerated men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility brought Grover's Corners inside a maximum security prison. After the 2017 arena bombing in Manchester UK, the Royal Exchange Theatre chose Our Town as its offering for the stricken community. It remains to be seen if in the wake of coronavirus, when theatres re-open around the world, the play will be staged once again as a way to reflect and heal.

80 years after it was written, more than 110 years after its actions take place, Our
Town continues to assert itself as an essential play about how we must embrace and appreciate the value of life itself. Another Day's Begun, publishing just after the 83rd anniversary since it was first staged (at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton on January 22, 1938), explains how this American classic continues to have the power to inspire and endure in the modern day, onstage and beyond.

Howard Sherman is a theatre administrator, writer, and advocate. He has been executive director of the American Theatre Wing and the O'Neill Theater Center, managing director of Geva Theatre, general manager of Goodspeed Musicals and public relations director of Hartford Stage. He has also interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts. Since 2012, he has been the US columnist for The Stage newspaper in London, and in 2018 was named Contributing Editor of Stage Directions magazine. His writing has appeared in a number of publications including Slate, The New York Times, the Guardian, and American Theatre Magazine. He was cited as one of the Top 40 Free Speech Defenders in 2014 by the National Coalition Against Censorship and received the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund's "Defender" Award in 2015; he frequently consults, writes and speaks on issues of censorship in both academic and professional theatre.

Pub date: January 28th, 2021