Classic play spurs quest for Arlington’s personal histories

Published 12:11 am Tuesday, April 1, 2008

ARLINGTON — This version of “Our Town” is making them think about their town.

For more than two dozen Arlington High School students, the play by Thornton Wilder has become more than memorizing lines and mastering cadence. It is a lure to examine their own town from a historical and even philosophical perspective.

To ready for their roles, the young actors recently strolled through the Arlington Municipal Cemetery guided by descendents of the town’s pioneers.

The teens pocketed their iPods and put their cell phones on vibrate, wandering through the rows of gravestones, reading weatherworn epitaphs and listening to the volunteers describe a different era of their hometown.

“Yes, I’m the drama director, but I’m also a teacher,” said Scott Moberly, the school’s drama instructor. “I know there are lessons that go far beyond the play. When you get these opportunities, you take them. You have to.”

“Our Town” is the Pulitzer Prize-winning play that follows the lives of ordinary people in the fictional small town of Grover’s Corners, N.H., between 1901 and 1913. Moberly knows that Wilder’s work transcends place and time and examines universal themes of life, love, death and the mysteries of the afterlife. That was part of its appeal to bring it to his high school students.

The play ends in a cemetery where the townspeople mourn a young mother who dies in childbirth and the ghosts of the dead try to prepare her for the next stage of her existence.

Senior Robert Peiffle, who was cast to play the town’s Doc Gibbs, said Wilder’s work remains relevant today.

“Grover’s Corners is supposed to be an American small town,” he said. “Grover’s Corners is Arlington. It’s Marysville. It is every other town in America.”

As Moberly’s students walked through the grassy grounds, they asked their guides questions about what life was like when they were teens and about father-and-son relationships.

The Arlington Municipal Cemetery, which opened in 1903, has stories at every turn. At last count, there are 7,074 people buried there. Each month, on average, nine more graves are dug.

Some students were drawn to one of the cemetery’s oldest grave markers. Marguarite Barber, whose headstone reads 1860-1904, seemed to urge them to appreciate life and live it well with her parting words engraved in marble:

“Stop and behold as you pass by

As you are now so once was I

As I am now you soon may be

So prepare to die and follow me.”

Many of the students had passed the open cemetery on bikes and cars for years but had never ventured under the stone arch that fronts 67th Avenue. They hadn’t studied the cemetery’s towering Sequoia that was planted some time between World War I and the Great Depression or read the engravings of their predecessors.

For Brittany Baugh, a senior whose family has moved with each of her father’s Navy assignments, the walk gave a sense of belonging.

“I have never been in a town before where everybody knows everybody,” said Baugh, whose stage manager role in the play is really one of a narrator who knows everyone.

Moberly believes the graveyard visit and a stop at the local museum allowed students to see how rich life in a small town can be.

It is a lesson close to Lynn Stone’s heart. The Arlington-area resident, who still feels like a newcomer after 15 years, helped connect the high school drama students to longtime Arlington residents.

“It was kind of like one of those magical things,” Stone said. “Since I got here, I have been looking for ways to bring the old and new Arlington together.”

The list of guides included 86-year-old Harry Yost, who could tell his followers plenty about doing chores in the 1930s.

Another recruit was Bill Klein, whose great-grandparents were among the original Arlington homesteaders. Klein, 50, was one of 10 children who grew up on a dairy farm, playing baseball among the cow pies in between chores on the family’s land.

He enjoyed telling his family story and “what the forefathers had to go through” to his attentive group.

For Moberly, the exercise let his students compare Wilder’s message with their hometown and draw their own conclusions.

It also caused Moberly to read the third-act cemetery scene for the umpteenth time.

It is easy to get drawn into the last act as a dark, sad and critical reflection, but it actually offers hope, he said.

“It seems like a weird place to find hope in a graveyard,” he said. “You see understanding and the wisdom. These people are still offering us lessons.”

Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or e-mail stevick@heraldnet.com.

An American theater classic

Arlington High School students will perform Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” later this month in the Linda Byrnes Performing Arts Center, 18821 Crown Ridge Blvd. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. April 25 and 26 and May 2 and 3.