Thornton Wilder's the Skin of Our Teeth

Thornton Wilder’s Skin of Our Teeth telescopes an audacious stretch of western history and mythology into a family drama, showing how the course of human events operates like theatre itself: constantly mutable, vanishing and beginning again.

Kyle Gillette explores Wilder’s extraordinary play in three parts. The first of these unpacks individual scenes’ many historic and mythic sources, and examines the play’s concentration of Western progress and power into the model of a white, American upper middle class nuclear family. Part two turns to the play’s singular yet deeply interconnected place in theatre history, comparing its metatheatrics to those of Pirandello and Brecht, and finding its anticipation of American fantasias in the works of Vogel and Kushner. Part three takes a longer view, seeking to fully engage the play’s philosophical stakes.

This volume magnifies the play’s ideas and connections, teasing out historical, theoretical and philosophical questions of interest to readers, scholars and audience members alike.

Kyle Gillette is Associate Professor and Director of Theatre at Trinity University San Antonio.