Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s depiction of rural New England life in the early 1900s, is among the most frequently performed plays in the U.S. Making the classic feel fresh is no easy feat.
But an upcoming production of Our Town at Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph features a twist that has never been done: It melds the iconic 20th-century play with the folk-pop music of Vermont singer-songwriter Noah Kahan.
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The play, which runs from Friday, February 28, through Sunday, March 9, opens with the cast singing Kahan’s “Northern Attitude,” from his breakout 2022 album, Stick Season. Kahan’s “Call Your Mom” kicks off the second act, and “You’re Gonna Go Far” opens the third. All are set to a live band. The show accompanies the Smithsonian’s “Crossroads: Change in Rural America” exhibition, on view in the Chandler Gallery through Saturday, March 22.
The mashup is what director Ben Rapson imagines would emerge if Kahan and Wilder walked into a bar.
“I think they would have really liked each other,” Rapson, 40, said. “They both have this talent for describing the ineffable.”
Our Town is set in the fictional New Hampshire hamlet of Grover’s Corners. Narrated by the omniscient Stage Manager, played by Rapson, the play unfolds in three acts that jump through time. Act 1 takes a wide-angle view of daily life in the small town, introducing its history and characters. Act 2 focuses on the marriage between childhood neighbors Emily Webb and George Gibbs. In the third and final act, Emily has died in childbirth and, in the afterlife, revisits her 12th birthday celebration. She now more fully appreciates the beauty in everyday moments — but only with the perspective that death brings.
She famously asks, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it … every, every minute?”
“No. Saints and poets, maybe…” the Stage Manager answers.
Kahan’s music explores similar concepts. In “Call Your Mom,” the singer pleads with a friend contemplating suicide to choose life. “Northern Attitude,” meanwhile, reflects on life’s fleeting nature with the lyrics “You build a boat, you build a life / You lose your friends, you lose your wife.”
Rapson is making his Vermont debut as a director after moving to the state in 2018 from Seattle, where he cofounded the theater company Emerald City Scene. He conceptualized the unusual fusion one day while listening to Kahan’s music. The Randolph resident recognized that both Kahan’s lyrics and Wilder’s play explore themes of connection to a place and accepting mortality. That message is personal for Rapson, who survived leukemia as a child and said the near-death experience gave him a renewed perspective on life.
“If we are doing our jobs right, anyone who sees this production is going to be more grateful for the mundane and less afraid to die,” he said.
Rapson said Kahan personally endorsed the idea. A cast member who had grown up with the Strafford-born singer reached out to him with the concept, and Kahan messaged back that the production had his blessing.
Rita Champion, a 38-year-old from Bethel, plays Julia Gibbs, George’s mother. Kahan’s “Call Your Mom” resonates deeply, she said.
“I can’t not cry every time I sing it,” Champion said. “I worry onstage if I can actually keep singing while crying.”
Max Dybvig, a 35-year-old Tunbridge resident, plays Howie Newsom, the town milkman. While he likes Kahan’s music, the idea of stick season in Grover’s Corners caused some initial confusion.
“The first time I mentioned that I was in Our Town, somebody was like, ‘Oh, that’s the one with the Noah Kahan songs,'” he said. “And I said, ‘No, it’s not! This is, like, the 1930s Thornton Wilder play about a New England town.'”
After realizing they were indeed describing the same production, Dybvig said, he found the mashup to be surprisingly effective.
While incorporating Kahan songs may be unorthodox, the production will feature Wilder’s original script and stage directions, including the absence of a physical set and props. Instead, the actors mime the set, a minimalism that helps the story feel universal. At a recent rehearsal attended by Seven Days, Rapson reminded the actors not to walk through the imaginary closed “door” and to be consistent in whether the door opened inward or outward.
Other elements will be modernized. The actors will wear contemporary clothing rather than the typical 20th-century period costumes.
“We want people to see themselves onstage,” Rapson explained. “We want them to see their parents, their grandparents.”
Rapson also encouraged the actors to use their natural voices — unlike the 2002 Broadway revival of Our Town, in which actor Paul Newman played the Stage Manager with a thick New Hampshire accent.
“I don’t even know how to spell it. He goes, ‘Jahhhg!'” Rapson joked at rehearsal, dropping the R in “George” to mimic Newman. “No accents for us — only what’s natural.”
That authenticity is central to the production’s approach, as Rapson encourages the cast members — most of whom live in Randolph — to bring their true selves to the roles, with minimal acting. Our Town is about everyday life in rural New England, after all.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Thornton Wilder, Meet Noah Kahan | The Chandler’s rendition of Our Town incorporates hit music by the Vermont singer-songwriter”
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2025.
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