Purdue’s theatre program will present Our Town, Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play from April 16-26, offering audiences a reflective look at love and loss.

Professor Quetta Carpenter had the opportunity to direct professionally at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival and a theatre festival in Pakistan, Karachi. Now, she is displaying her directing artistry at Purdue.

“It is a little bit like being an orchestra conductor, if you think about it,” Carpenter said. “You have an entire assortment of musicians that know their parts, and my job is to set the tempo, set the tone and to work on musicality, only with actors and designers.”

For Carpenter, directing Our Town is more than just reimagining a classic; she says it may be one of the best American plays ever to be written.

“It celebrates the mundane, which sounds like a bad thing, but really, it isn’t,” Carpenter said. “It looks at the extraordinary nature of the daily existence of the human hero that is so beautiful.”

Although the play was written in 1938, Carpenter explained she wanted to embrace a modern context and highlight the specific Purdue students who were bringing the show to life.

“So, I gave them the prompt of ‘this is our our town’, and they responded to that prompt beautifully,” Carpenter said. “One of the things we’re doing is inviting the audience to be part of the show. There are three roles that are audience members that ask questions.”

Our Town will be performed at Purdue’s Carole and Gordon Mallett Theatre in West Lafayette, and tickets can be viewed on the Ticket Master website or by calling (765) 494-3933. In addition, there will be showings in Indianapolis May 2-3 at the Livia and Steve Russell Theatre. These tickets can be found on the Phoenix Theatre website.