The focus of the play then develops from "Daily Life" in the first act to "Love and Marriage" in the second act and "Death" in the last act. This final act shifts the setting from the streets of Grover's Corners to the cemetery on the hill outside town. Thus, Wilder presents a unified whole — human life summed up in three acts, all of which flow along in a perfectly normal pattern. Wilder reveals a bare stage featuring no scenery and few props. This minimalist technique, which he pioneered with Our Town, makes everyday objects represent larger structures: A counter becomes the drug store, and a trellis symbolizes a whole house and garden. His purpose in reducing the scope of his staging is to emphasize ordinary things and to restore importance to life's trivia. By activating the audience's imagination, he stimulates them to conjure up for themselves the larger objects and themes that he is suggesting.
This technique of saying more with less has other purposes. First, by having no definite scenery, the play transcends Grover's Corners and becomes universal. It can be reproduced on almost any stage in any country. Even in a foreign land, the audience can visualize local towns. Also, Wilder is interested in presenting a true picture of life. To do so, he breaks with realism and demands that members of the audience supply their own up-to-the-minute mental realism to flesh out sets and staging.
