Finding the theatre of the 1920s lacking in bite and conviction, Thornton Wilder set out to bring back realism and to celebrate the innocent, simple and religious. Yet he also tried to endow individual experience with cosmic significance and Our Town is both an affectionate portrait of American life and 'an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life'. The Skin of our Teeth deals with human survival in a 'comic strip' way, and The Matchmaker is a hilarious farce which urges rebellion against all the constraints that deny a rich, full life.

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Thornton Wilder (17th April 1897 - 7th December 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin and spent part of his childhood in China. Wilder began writing plays as a young student and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize three times for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth. Wilder's success allowed him to build a house for his family in Connecticut where he lived with his sister Isabel, also an accomplished writer, until his death in 1975.