SOURCE: "A New Face in Graver's Corners," in The New York Times, December 4, 1988, pp. 1, 10.

In the following essay, Rothstein discusses Gray's artistic motivations and involvement in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

Thornton Wilder, in his 1957 preface to "Three Plays":

"Our Town is not offered as a picture of life in a New Hampshire village; or as a speculation about the conditions of life after death {that element I merely took from Dante's Purgatory). It is an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life. I have made the claim as preposterous as possible, for I have set the village against the largest dimensions of time and place. The recurrent words in this play (few have noticed it) are 'hundreds,' 'thousands,' and 'millions.' Emily's joys and griefs, her algebra lessons and her birthday...