OUR TOWN: HK/USA is an innovative Drama Workshop programme organised by the Department of English of City University of Hong Kong, under the direction of Fulbright Specialist Visiting Professor, playwright Alvin Eng, and New York director/actress, Wendy Wasdahl. During the course of the workshop, City University students studied Thornton Wilder's seminal, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Our Town. The students then wrote short plays inspired by Our Town about their own lives, under the theme of My Town: Hong Kong Time Capsule 2011.

Thornton Wilder spent part of his childhood in China while his father was serving as U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 1910s. The influence of Wilder's early exposure to Chinese opera and culture can be seen in Our Town. Eng says, "I love that Our Town is the quintessential 20th Century Americana play, but it has Chinese roots in its groundbreaking minimalism and use of the Stage Manager as narrator". The exchange has been an especially meaningful one to New York-born Chinese American Eng, whose parents were from Toishan, Guangdong Province.

Eng and Wasdahl are excited to welcome audiences to see the creative responses of City University of Hong Kong students to Our Town.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception follows. For more information, please call 3442 8870 or visit http://www.english.cityu.edu.hk/OurTown/.