In his program note to the 2023 production of Our Town at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Center’s President and CEO Phillip Sneed suggests that the play’s central preoccupation is “what it means to be part of a community.” He sees this reflected both in the obvious sense, in that the play is an exploration of a particular community over the course of—and just after—a brief lifetime. But it is also true in a more subtle sense, as arts organizations such as the Arvada Center emerge slowly from the COVID-19 pandemic and embark on the effort to rebuild the communities that sustain them. Sneed (and Arvada Center artistic director Lynne Collins) picked Our Town as a vehicle for reigniting that spark of community, inviting audience members to once again “join with others in the communal experience of watching live theatre.”
Director Geoffrey Kent—who also plays the...
