Thornton Wilder in Collaboration

Book excerpt: The essays in this volume evolved from papers presented at the Second International Thornton Wilder Conference, held at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, in June 2015. They examine Wilder’s work as both playwright and novelist, focusing upon how he drew on the collaborative mode of creativity required in the theatre, when writing both drama and fiction. The book’s authors use the term “collaboration” in its broadest sense, at times in response to Wilder’s critics who faulted him for “borrowing” from other, earlier, literary works rather than recognizing these “borrowings” as central to the artistic process of collaboration. In exploring Wilder’s collaborative efforts of different kinds, the essays not only consider how Wilder worked with and revised earlier literary texts and the ideas central to those texts, but also analyze how Wilder worked with and inspired other creative individuals and how recent productions of Wilder’s plays, both in the US and abroad, have been the products of unique forms of collaboration.