Wilder's Wildest: Students Put on Skin of our Teeth

Is there actually skin on one’s teeth? Can it wrinkle or peel? Where does this strange figure of speech come from? Though the play The Skin of Our Teeth might not answer these questions, it does succeed in its discussion of family and the American Dream.

Written by Thornton Wilder, this play is both serious in meaning and comical in the ways in which it strays from convention. The play experiments with the linear flow of time and the relational boundaries between character and actor. Wilder’s sixth play, The Skin of Our Teeth earned the author a third Pulitzer Prize in 1943, and is commonly thought of as the masterpiece of his life’s work. His previous works include The Matchmaker from which the smash hit musical Hello Dolly! was adapted, and Our Town for which he won a Pulitzer in 1938.

Skin first appeared on Broadway at the Plymouth Theater in 1942. Tonight, the latest rendition of it will appear on campus at Lerner’s Black Box Theater. It is directed by Anna Posner, BC ’06, and stars various Barnard and Columbia students.

Told in three acts, the play is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, their two children, and the family maid. Within each act, the family survives several historically sweeping and epic events which include the Ice Age, the Great Flood, and World War II. The extensive time scale of the play, spanning thousands of years, as well as its allegorical connections to certain Biblical characters transform The Skin of Our Teeth into a portrait of the persistent human desire to survive. Meta-theatricality also plays a prominent role in the play’s structure, because the actors repeatedly break out of character and refer to themselves within the play.

Posner sees the play’s treatment of time and its unconventional use of theatrical conventions as appealing. But these aspects are also challenging to the director’s process. Posner has in part focused on the “play within a play” nature of Skin, as have the actors. In this way she and the actors have “discovered both the actors who play the characters in the ‘play within’ and also the characters themselves.” Each actor must in essence play two characters: the actor playing the character as well as the character itself. Posner says this requires discovering “where the two characters overlap and where they are distinct.”

Christina Norris, BC ’05, who plays the role of Sabina (the Antrobus’ maid) explains that because of the “meta-theatricality of the play ... there are various layers of character and meaning that have to be considered at any given moment.” This makes acting within the play challenging because “it’s impossible to ever get comfortable in a moment or a choice because there is so much at stake and so much going on under the surface.” Fortunately, this particular challenge keeps the play’s peripheral and underlying meanings fresh and free from any boring predictability.

Both the director and actors agree that The Skin of Our Teeth’s underlying message of human resiliency and fortitude make the play applicable to all times and places. Norris considers this adaptability “the sign of a truly great play” and of Wilder’s theatrical genius and literary intelligence. As Posner puts it, the play’s message and interesting treatment of time create “a jarring and interesting experience for the theater-goer.”

Running from March 31 to April 1, the Columbia production of Wilder’s play promises to be both a serious and humorous reflection on human existence and the very process of theater itself. Through the play’s format, Wilder intends for us to see more than the humor in theater. He wants us to understand, as Norris explains, “the vital importance of theater as a means of expression” and as a way to “tap into the human soul.” .”