[photo credit: Eventbrite]
The play traces a century of American life through several generations of one family in a small New England town. Hilsman has described it as loosely inspired by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that remains one of the most frequently performed plays in American theater. Where Wilder set his story in the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, Hilsman sets his in Essex Corners — a town of his own invention.
The PCC Foundation and PCC Theater Department are jointly presenting the production. Suzanne Hunt-Jenner, a PCC theater professor, is directing. Hunt-Jenner has more than 100 credits in television, film, commercials and industrials, with work in Los Angeles, New York, London and Paris, according to the press release. At PCC, she has directed productions including Three Sisters, Eurydice, The Laramie Project and The Great Gatsby.
Hilsman is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who has written for Sony, Disney, New Line, NBC and ABC, the press release states. He has served as a theater and television critic for Variety and HuffPost. He is the resident playwright at Parson’s Nose Theater in Pasadena and a former member of PCC’s Board of Trustees, elected in 2015.
The play had a staged reading at Parson’s Nose Theater in February 2025, directed by Parson’s Nose Artistic Director Lance Davis. The PCC production marks the play’s first full staging.
Tickets are $10 to $15 and are available online. Performances take place at the Center for the Arts at Pasadena City College, 1570 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena.
The PCC Foundation is a nonprofit corporation that raises funds to support teaching and learning at Pasadena City College, according to its website. PCC was founded in 1924.
