OT: Our Town

OT: Our Town (2002)

Sub-Genres - Biography, Sociology  |   Release Date - Aug 15, 2003 (USA - Limited)  |   Run Time - 77 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - R
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Synopsis by Mark Deming

The Los Angeles community of Compton has become infamous thanks to news reports and rap music lyrics that have portrayed it as an African-American neighborhood brought to the edge of destruction by corruption and black-on-black crime. In 2003, a handful of students and teachers at Compton's Dominguez High School decided to do something that hadn't happened at the school in more than 20 years -- put on a play. When it became obvious that the financially strapped school (which had recently canceled its football program) couldn't provide a budget for sets or costumes, the students did what money-conscious high-school theater departments have been doing for decades -- they staged Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a drama commonly performed without the use of sets or large props. But what would Wilder's allegorical story of life in a small turn-of-the-century Midwestern hamlet mean to kids in Compton? And would the inexperienced students and faculty be able to bring it off? OT: Our Town is a documentary which looks at Dominguez High's brave experiment and the people who struggled to make it happen.

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Keywords

against-all-odds, drama-teacher, ghetto, high-school, play [drama], rehearsal, teenagers, theater