THORNTON WILDER'S THE EMPORIUM
Adapted & Completed by KIRK LYNN
Directed by ROB MELROSE
More than 75 years in the making, an unfinished work by one of America’s greatest dramatists takes the New York stage at last. The Emporium unveils Thornton Wilder’s final play, brought to life through playwright Kirk Lynn’s masterful completion. As a young man journeys through the city and beyond, he encounters a world of wonder, meaning, and the elusive truths of life itself. Wilder’s long-unseen masterpiece is finally ready to be discovered, offering a rare chance to experience a new work from a legendary voice.
THE ARTISTS
THORNTON WILDER (Playwright) Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and educated at Oberlin, Yale (B.A. 1920) and Princeton (M.A. 1925), Thornton Wilder was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and the cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. Wilder is the only writer to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and drama—for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) and two plays, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). His other novels include The Cabala, The Woman of Andros, Heaven’s My Destination, The Ides of March, The Eighth Day and Theophilus North. His other major dramas include The Matchmaker (adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly!) and The Alcestiad. The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, The Long Christmas Dinner and Pullman Car Hiawatha are among his celebrated shorter plays. Wilder also enjoyed success as an essayist, translator, research scholar, teacher, lecturer, actor, librettist and screenwriter. His screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943) remains a classic psycho-thriller to this day. Wilder’s many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Book Committee’s Medal for Literature, The Order of Merit (Peru), and the Goethe-Plakette (Germany). In 1930, with royalties received from The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Wilder built a home for himself and his family in Hamden, CT. Although often away from it for as many as 250 days a year, restlessly seeking quiet places in which to write, Thornton Wilder always returned to “The House The Bridge Built.” He died here on December 7th, 1975.
More information on Thornton Wilder and his family is available in Penelope Niven’s definitive biography, Thornton Wilder: A Life (2013) as well as on the Wilder Family website, www.thorntonwilder.com
Photo courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Photo courtesy of Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
KIRK LYNN (Adapter) is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and one of the founders of the Rude Mechs theatre collective, making new performance in Austin, TX for 30 years, including Lipstick Traces, Method Gun, and The Cold Record, a solo-show Kirk performs about setting the record for missing the most days of school with a fever and falling in love with the school nurse.
In 2015, Kirk’s debut novel, Rules for Werewolves was published by Melville House. Kirk has adapted it as a feature film and made a short with 10 Acre Films starring Finn Wolfhard. In 2023, Kirk co-wrote What Happens Later, directed by and starring Meg Ryan.
Kirk is the Head of Playwriting and Directing at the University of Texas at Austin where he specializes in teaching creativity through the anthropology of play, resisting bureaucracy, and fostering positive mischief in students and colleagues.
Kirk is married to the poet and novelist Carrie Fountain and they have two kids, Nosleeper and Muchloud.
ROB MELROSE (Director) is the Artistic Director of the Alley Theatre where he has directed productions of The Glass Menagerie, The Janeiad (world premiere), Pictures from Home, Thornton Wilder’s The Emporium (world premiere), The Servant of Two Masters, Born with Teeth (world premiere), Sweat, The Winter’s Tale, 1984, and Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and adapted and directed a new production of A Christmas Carol. He was formerly the Artistic Director and co-founder of the Cutting Ball Theater. He has directed at The Public Theater, The Guthrie Theater, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Asolo Rep, Magic Theatre, The Old Globe, and PlayMakers Rep among others. He has taught at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, USF, the University of Rhode Island, and Marin Academy. He has a BA in English and Theater from Princeton University and an MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama. Rob directed Strindberg’s Svarta Handsken (The Black Glove) in Stockholm, Sweden at Strindberg’s Intimate Theater. His translations of Woyzeck, Ubu Roi, and Pelleas & Melisande have been published by EXIT Press and his adaptations of The Servant of Two Masters and A Christmas Carol have been published by Theatrical Rights Worldwide. He has written a number of plays including: Helen of Troy, The Flat Earth, Divorsosaurus, When Human Voices Wake Us, Asylum, and Serpentyne and has written a rock musical adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz.