A person in a checkered dress raises their hands and looks upward, standing in front of a large, artistic drawing of an eye projected on a screen behind them.

Prep School: My Town

My Town is an experimental take on the American classic Our Town, from 1938. Jack Ferver’s production is a speculative queer departure from the original, and takes place in a small town in upstate New York. My Town sheds vital light on queer experience outside of urban centers, an experience which is often repressed. Learn more about Jack Ferver.

OFFICE HOURS

Jack Ferver and Joshua Lubin-Levy in conversation around disappearance, dramaturgy and the pleasure in mystery.

GET THEE TO THE LIBRARY

Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.

B. J. Hollars. Dispatches from the Drownings: Reporting the Fiction of Nonfiction. University of New Mexico Press, 2014.

Michael Lesy. Wisconsin Death Trip. Pantheon, 1973.

Adam Ochonicky. Nostalgic Violence, Nebulous Spaces, and Blank Identities. Indiana University Press, 2020.

READ ALL ABOUT IT

My Town: Jack Ferver

“In choreographer and theater director Jack Ferver’s My Town, the small town is a portal that provides special access into questions of self-expression and collective agency.”

EMPAC | 2025

JACK FERVER with Ivan Talijancic

“Never the one to shy away from difficult subject matter, Jack Ferver has created an idiosyncratic body of work over the past decade, managing to pull off an audacious feat of making his audience flinch and laugh simultaneously.”

Brooklyn Rail | May 2018

Jack Ferver

“Emerging from a tortured childhood into his craft, Jack Ferver seeks to imbue their audiences with catharsis. “

PRINT – Design Matters | May 13, 2018

WHOSE TOWN?

My Town takes an experimental queer and speculative departure from the 1938 American classic Our Town, written by Thornton Wilder. Learn more about Ferver’s inspiration below.

The birth and life of an American classic: ‘Our Town’

For some audience members, the show’s lack of scenery and episodic narrative may have seemed odd or puzzling.

Vintage poster advertising a one-time performance of “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder, featuring Frank Craven, at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton on January 22 at 8:30 PM, prior to its New York opening.

EMPAC | 2025

Review: An ‘Our Town’ for All of Us, Starring Jim Parsons

The Thornton Wilder classic returns to Broadway, still brutal and avant-garde after 86 years.

A man in a blue suit stands center stage, arm raised toward hanging lanterns above. Behind him, a group of people in vintage attire sits on tiered benches, watching him. The stage floor is wooden, with lanterns placed in front.

The New York Times | Oct. 10, 2024

WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP

Jack Ferver also found inspriation for My Town in the 1973 book Wisconsin Death Trip, written by Michael Lesy. The book is mostly a collection of photos taken of a small town crumbling under the weight of the Great Depression.

50 Years On, ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’ Still Haunts and Inspires

“In a way that few documentary texts do, it makes us leave the baggage of modernity at the trailhead.”

The New York Times | March 1, 2023

The Real Story Behind Eerie Wisconsin Death Trip

“Some very unsettling things were happening in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, from 1890 to 1900: epidemics, insanities, suicides, burnings, bank closings, early deaths. This darker side of life was chronicled in the 1973 book Wisconsin Death Trip, a poetic and disturbing collection of photography and newspaper accounts about life in small-town America.”

Artful Living | May 17, 2018