During intermission, stagehands rearrange the stage. They place ten or twelve chairs in three rows. As Act III is about to begin, the audience sees actors take their places in the chairs, leaving an empty chair in the center of the front row beside Mrs. Gibbs and Simon Stimson.
The Stage Manager describes the gradual alteration that has occurred in Grover's Corners over the past nine years. He stresses that "on the whole, things don't change much around here " He introduces the scene, a graveyard on a beautiful, windy hilltop on the outskirts of town, which is "certainly an important part of Grover's Corners ".
The Stage Manager reminds us that the characters are friends — Mrs. Gibbs, Mr. Stimson, Mrs. Soames, and Wally Webb. Many residents have brought other loved ones to the hill and left them. Some day, everyone will come to the cemetery to stay when their "fit's [fight's] over ".
He notes that there is something eternal about human life. The nice thing about the dead is that they lose interest in the living. Their pleasures and ambitions cease as they wean themselves away from earthly concerns and wait quietly and peacefully for something to happen — something that will clarify the eternal part of them. The stage manager warns that the comments of the spirits may offend because the dead have different concerns from the living.
