Thornton Wilder’s THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

“And I'm sorry to say we'll need a short rehearsal, just a short run-through. And as some of it takes place in the auditorium, we'll have to keep the curtain up.”

Mr. Antrobus (out of character, explaining after substituting last-minute volunteers for actors) in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth

Student Actor Theresa Carver as Sabina in Samford University Theatre’s 1978 production of The Skin of Our Teeth

I wrote about how much I love The Skin of Our Teeth in my book, Theatre Is My Life! The line quoted above illustrates some of the play’s theatricality. When theatre practitioners talk about “theatricality,” we don’t mean a person or action that is exaggerated or excessively dramatic. What we are describing are dramatic components, such as: less true to life sets, a nonrealistic acting style, and the breaking the fourth wall, that  imaginary line at the proscenium that separates actors from the audience.

At the very beginning of the first act of The Skin of Our Teeth, the stage manager, Mr. Fitzpatrick from the wings counsels the actress Miss Somerset — who is on stage playing Sabina — to kill some time since Mrs. Antrobus’s entrance is delayed. The actor quavers a bit with her monologue until taking this opportunity to complain about how eccentric she finds the play. Of course, the out of character ad lib is scripted and ends as Mrs. Antrobus enters the scene.

When we produced The Skin of Our Teeth at Samford University in 1978, we had an all star cast. Our Sabina was expertly played — as were all the Antrobuses — and their lines echo in my head on many days. Sabina speaks the words containing the play’s title: “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?” Through this speech, Sabina prepares the audience for the many rises and falls of the play’s action, and the theme of humanity’s endurance through it all.

The character Job in the King James version of the Bible first says, "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” The phrase means that we have barely made it by the slenderest of margins. Working on plays for over 50 years instructed and still teaches me. In the theatre or in life, we often escape challenges by the thinnest and most tenuous rope to hang onto.

Theatre has also taught me to plan, plan, plan, but as the show is running — as life is happening all around me — to fly by the seat of my pants. By this phrase, I mean doing something difficult by depending on my gut instinct rather than specific knowledge or reason. This idiom sprang from the early days of aviation when pilots had no advanced navigation tools. They couldn’t even communicate with people on the ground. Thus, they were flying by the seat of their pants, without the capacity to rely on fully developed plans, but by  attuning to their bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits.

How freeing to realize that even by the slightest maneuvering room we survive. By planning but developing the skill to improvise when a scene or reality demands it, we come through: the actor breaks a bottle and cuts his hand badly wrapping it onstage, the sick lead dancer vomits in a trashcan each time she leaves the stage, the scenic piece rolls over a vital prop and the player wings it. We make it by the skin of our teeth when we can expertly fly by the seat of our pants.

At the end of Act 1, Mr. Antrobus brings his newly-invented wheel home to show the family. He shoos the mammoth and dinosaur outside because he needs room for refugees he brought home, including the poet Homer, the lawgiver Moses, a doctor, and a professor. The weather is freezing and they have to build a fire. In this very theatrical play, Sabina pleads with the audience for help stoking the fire. She cries, “Pass up your chairs everybody. Save the human race.” Wilder constructed the play to give the impression of impromptu action, in which the crowd can take part. We actually had some old wooden theatre seats which some of our actors, seated in the playhouse as patrons, carried up to the stage at this point. And some real audience members helped!

Mr. Fitzpatrick, a different sort of stage manager from the one in Wilder’s Our Town is one of those people who can fly by the seat of his pants — and by doing so, he helps fix things. In Act III, just after Sabina enters, the stage manager stops the scene to report several performers are ill with food poisoning. He then asks the actor playing Mr. Antrobus for help. At this point, the leading man drops character, explaining to the onlookers that the ailing performers will be replaced by “a number of splendid volunteers,” including his own dresser and Miss Somerset’s maid. He tells them, “And I'm sorry to say we'll need a short rehearsal, just a short run-through. And as some of it takes place in the auditorium, we'll have to keep the curtain up.”

The Antrobuses have to endure glacial temperatures, talks of divorce, a biblical flood, and a devastating war — in fact, the end of the world seems near — but the family lives on. At the end of the play, Sabina repeats much of her opening dialogue and then comes down to the edge of the stage and says: “This is where you came in. We have to go on for ages and ages yet. You go home. The end of this play isn't written yet. Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus! Their heads are full of plans and they're as confident as the first day they began, — and they told me to tell you: good night.”

Despite setbacks of wars, natural disasters, and other catastrophes, people stay on an upward spiral as we inch up the levels of consciousness development. Wilder had begun writing Skin just before Pearl Harbor and ended his work a few weeks after the attacks. He actually missed the New York premier of his show on November 18, 1942 because he was on overseas duty as an army intelligence officer.

I love the fact that the action ends where it began. History is always repeating itself and despite one disaster after another, we humans miraculously fly by the seat of our pants, reconstruct our lives, and — by the skin of our teeth — help the world at least partly right itself again.