Notes from the Artistic Director Susan E. Evans:
History of the Play
In early 1940, Thornton Wilder finished in six weeks the first act of a play he wanted to write
about the positive in mankind amidst the horrific events of 1939. The play was initially titled
The Ends of the Worlds, eventually to become The Skin of Our Teeth. Wilder struggled mightily
with the play due to many factors, including its extremely ambitious theme and his own self
doubts, and it was not completed until a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on
December 7, 1941.
Previewing in New Haven, The Skin of Our Teeth then moved on to Baltimore and opened on
Broadway on November 18, 1942, directed by Elia Kazan, with the flamboyant, and notoriously
difficult, Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, Frederic March as Mr. Antrobus and Montgomery Clift as
Henry. Demonstrating an exciting break from established theatrical conventions, The Skin of
Our Teeth won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Best Drama. The Skin of Our Teeth play has
enjoyed countless revivals, including one in Paris in 1955 starring Helen Hayes, George Abbott
and Mary Martin, a postwar production in London directed by Laurence Olivier with Vivien
Leigh as Sabina and a 1975 Kennedy Center/American Bicentennial Theatre production starring
Elizabeth Ashley. In 1948, Thornton Wilder himself performed the role of George Antrobus in
summer stock productions.
First and foremost a humanist, Wilder’s work reflects his unfailingly optimistic belief in man’s
ability to ultimately survive, to endure, and hopefully to learn something along the way. The
playwright very consciously intended The Skin of Our Teeth as a war play, providing a basic
message of hope at a time of tremendous world-weariness, a fact European audiences well
understood and embraced, even more than American ones. The New York Times Magazine
called The Skin of Our Teeth a “rousing testament of faith in humanity.”
Plot Summary
The Skin of Our Teeth is a timeless classic of the American stage, as wacky and moving today as
it was over 70 years ago. Wilder’s archetypal Papa and Mama, George and Maggie Antrobus,
have been married for a mere 5,000 years; they have two “perfect” children, Gladys and Henry,
and a vamp for a maid. Just a typical American family living in a New Jersey suburb, but also the
first family of the human race, and they must survive the Ice Age, the Flood and an apocalyptic
War — all by the skin of their teeth. Mr. Antrobus is Everyman; in fact, the family name,
“Antrobus” comes from the Greek “anthropos,” meaning “man” and this family is, in essence,
the Family of Man. Depicting the cyclical nature of human existence, The Skin of Our Teeth
manages the near impossible feat of being an allegory about all of humanity and the boisterous
chronicle of one family. As Wilder himself described the characters, “They are the stuff of which
heroes are made, heroes and buffoons... The Skin of Our Teeth is the destiny of the whole
human group seen from a telescope 1000 miles away.”
A complete synopsis of The Skin of Our Teeth follows these notes.
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Theatrical Styles
For this play, Thornton Wilder drew from a variety of styles – from vaudeville and burlesque,
melodrama, surrealism, absurdism, German Expressionism, even Brechtian Epic Theatre
(through such devices as the use of screen projections and announcements to set up ideas).
Unlike Brecht, whose plays were instructive, political dramas, Wilder focused on humanistic
goals, the process of learning and the human condition, its eternal problems and the lessons
history has taught. One can also see the influence of Luigi Pirandello and his play,
Six Characters in Search of an Author, when the actors in The Skin of Our Teeth step out of
character and directly address the audience. The imaginary “fourth wall” is broken and the
stage manager has to step in to get the production back on track. The Skin of Our Teeth is
written in a very presentational style, and its style of absurd comedy was a forerunner of the
Theatre of Absurd of Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. Wilder was an incredibly erudite
man, extremely well-read and well-traveled. He wrote to Gertrude Stein, a close friend, that he
wanted the mood of the play to be “Giant-Cosmic-Grotesque” and he very much wanted to
escape the constraints of realistic theatre. Our DMT production explores this theatrical selfconsciousness, or meta-theatricality, to the fullest.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
THORNTON NIVEN WILDER (1897-1975), a former Berkeley resident, was a world-renowned
playwright and a singular figure in American theater, and a highly respected novelist, letterwriter, translator and educator. His second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, won the Pulitzer
Prize for fiction in 1928, and two of his major plays, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, won
Pulitzer Prizes for drama, in 1938 and 1943, respectively. Mr. Wilder’s play The Matchmaker
enjoyed a lengthy Broadway run and was later adapted into the record-breaking musical Hello,
Dolly! Other works for theatre include The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays and The
Alcestiad; Mr. Wilder’s novels include The Woman of Andros, Heaven’s My Destination, The Ides
of March, The Eighth Day and, his last novel, viewed as autobiographical, Theophilus North. Mr.
Wilder also self-identified as an educator, and through his life taught and/or lectured at the
Lawrenceville School, the University of Chicago and Harvard, and received honorary degrees
from Yale, Harvard, Oberlin and Northwestern. His numerous awards and honors include the
Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal
of Freedom, and the National Book Committee’s Medal for Literature.
Plot Summary*
*The following plot summary is excerpted from The Thornton Wilder Society website:
“We came through the depression by the skin of our teeth, — that’s true! — one more
tight squeeze like that and where will we be?” Wilder prepares the audience, through
the voice of Sabina, the Antrobus family’s melodramatic maid, for the “cosmic allegory”
that serves as the framework for The Skin of Our Teeth.
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In Act I, the Antrobus family is portrayed as the typical American family and a prime
specimen of the human race, comprised of Mr. Antrobus, inventor of the wheel and the
alphabet, Mrs. Antrobus, his wife, and their two children: Henry and Gladys. The
Antrobus’s live in Excelsior, New Jersey, during the Ice Age. As the audience soon
discovers, the Ice Age is only the first of three disasters through which the family must
struggle to survive in order to rebuild their community. Aesthetically, The Skin of Our
Teeth is similar to Wilder’s first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Our Town, in that both
exhibit nonrealistic sets and break the fourth wall. Yet, The Skin of Our Teeth goes a
step further; Wilder’s writing style facilitates “a double narrative: the story of the
Antrobus family in the play and the story of a theater company putting on the play.” For
example, in the very beginning of Act I, Mr. Fitzpatrick, the stage manager, calls from off
stage for Sabina, whom the audience discovers is really an actress named Miss
Somerset, to stall while they await Mrs. Antrobus’s entrance. Miss Somerset shakily
continues her monologue as Sabina before stopping to complain about the play The Skin
of Our Teeth as Miss Somerset. Sabina’s scripted ad lib is brought to a close upon Mrs.
Antrobus’s entrance. During Mrs. Antrobus’s interaction with her children, Henry and
Gladys, the audience learns that Henry is, in fact, Cain who, according to scripture and
The Skin of Our Teeth’s allusions, killed his brother Abel. When Mr. Antrobus finally
arrives home he invites refugees — Homer, Moses, and three of the Muses — to warm
themselves by the fire or, allegorically, to save the human race.
Act II finds the Antrobus’s after the Ice Age at an Atlantic City convention. Mr. and Mrs.
Antrobus are interviewed about Mr. Antrobus’s presidency of the Ancient and
Honorable Order of Mammals, Human Subdivision, and the couple’s five thousandth
wedding anniversary. Shortly thereafter Sabina, winner of a beauty contest judged
earlier by Mr. Antrobus, schemes to steal Mr. Antrobus away from his wife. However,
just as Mr. Antrobus readies himself to leave with Sabina, he regains his senses and
realizes the world is about to be flooded. Transforming into a Noah figure, Mr. Antrobus
gathers the animals two by two into a boat; his family and Sabina narrowly escape
extinction once again.
During the opening of the third act of The Skin of Our Teeth, Sabina searches for the
Antrobus family now that the war has finally come to an end. In his reference to war,
Wilder provided hope to those Americans troubled about World War II at the time of
the play’s premiere. Mr. Antrobus and Henry return from war to Excelsior, haggard and
hateful of one another. The actor playing Henry, seen now as a “representation of
strong unreconciled evil,” lunges at the actor playing his father, but Sabina steps
between the two men, ending the fight. As the tension begins to settle, Mr. Antrobus
admits that he does not have the strength or desire to rebuild society again. Yet, upon
discovering that his books have been saved, Mr. Antrobus’s will to begin again is
revived. Sabina closes Act III by repeating a portion of her Act I opening monologue and
announces that the end of the play has not yet been written. She advises the audience
to go home, sends the Antrobus’s good tidings, and ultimately reassures the audience of
the family’s confidence in overcoming the threats to their survival yet again.
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For more information, visit:
http://www.twildersociety.org/works/the-skin-of-our-teeth/
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