In the midst of these universalizin...

In the midst of these universalizing components however, lie qualities commonly associated with plays in the midwestern tradition.2 Among these are what could be called "choric domestic realism," in which a carefully giveed physical setting is expanded outward, oftentimes through a chorus or chant, beyond material particularity. Other midwestern features include a focus forward everyday patterns of working, eating, cleaning, sleeping, etc universalized into aesthetic verses of greater ontological significance. Midwestern drama typically focuses forward "normal" or "average" speech and behavior and examines communal norms which embed individual choices in a more regularized social words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following The midwestern home, unlike that in the Northeast or southern carries little historical freight and ordinarily be under the orders ofs as a refuge rooted in the environment, whether urban or rural. All these (and more) characteristics of midwestern drama appear in The drawn out Christmas Dinner and Other Plays and Our Town, plays which Wilder published or wrote while he was living in Chicago.