A.R. Gurney’s
THE DINING ROOM
Hecht Studio Theater, University of Miami, Fall 2018
Direction, Set & Lighting Design: Darren Patrick Blaney
Costume Design: Michiko Kitayama Skinner
Artistic Director: Michael Bush
Stage Manager: Narissa Agustin
Assistant Director: Chazz Guerra-Ogiste
Fight Choreography: Burton Tedesco
Musical Direction: NDavid Williams
Cast:
Nathalie Janata: Father, Peggy, Dora, Harriet, Claire, Host
Sophie Leicht: Sally, Ellie, Child, Old Lady, Kate, Tony, Emily, Guest
Maia Mulcahy: Annie, Carolyn, Winkie, Beth, Meg, Old Annie
Carter Nash: Client, Psychiatrist, Billy, Stuart, Gordon, David, Guest
Carlyn Rosario: Mother, Aggie, Child, Margery, Helen, Harvey, Ruth
Kira Shannon: Agent, Lizzie, Sandra, Nancy, Sarah, Bertha, Guest
Noah Wilcox Skurtu: Charlie, Ted, Nick, Ben, Dick, Guest
Brennan Staaf: Arthur, Grace, Brewster, Grandfather, Fred, Standish, Guest
Noah Vesey: Howard, Michael, Architect, Child, Paul, Chris, Jim, Guest
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
On first reading A.R. Gurney’s Pulitzer-nominated play The Dining Room, though struck by its ingenious blending of satire with sentimentality, I felt most drawn to its lampooning of “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant” culture. In our era of #MeToo, #BLM, #MAGA, and, in academe at least, an increasing awareness of the privilege and “unmarkedness” associated with “whiteness,” I wanted to amplify the play’s comedic social critique rather than its nostalgia for a “vanishing culture” that America has already abandoned. (Today, “whiteness” feels like the American monolith, rather than the “WASP”-ishness epitomized in a piece written in 1981. On the other hand, in our current vulgar “post-truth” hyper-partisan-age, do etiquette, refined speech, and decorum really seem all that bad?!? Perhaps only when used to maintain civility at the expense of social justice.)
Composed of a series of vignettes spanning the half century between the Great Depression and the Reagan era, The Dining Room is a dramatic comedy of manners that can also be seen as an anthropological deconstruction of WASP ethnicity presented in theatrical form. The scene between Aunt Harriet and her cerebral nephew functions as a sort of ethnography within an ethnography, if also a play within a play. Each scene is an independent exhibit, or snapshot in the family photo album, yet recurring cultural practices become evident. If Gurney is asking us to consider what actually comprises WASP culture, the answer he offers is both harsh and forgiving: proper grammar, underage drinking, repressed sexuality, stiff- upper-lip stoicism, neurotic infidelity, strict table manners and even stricter gender roles, an emotional dependence on (and yet simultaneous distance from) servants, Republican political leanings, anorexia, an aversion to emotional intimacy, a hyper- investment in maintaining class status, a sense of perpetual indebtedness resulting from the replicative investing in children by their parents, etc.
As I’ve found joy in the play’s humor, I’ve also become more appreciative of its focus on how these dysfunctional families are nevertheless sustained by deep and loyal love. I hope that my nontraditional casting will give additional power to the play’s implicit critiques of gender roles, and highlight the “unmarked” status of the WASP ethnicity. If nothing else, the stubborn sentimentality and persistent nostalgia that the piece refuses to relinquish proves that even WASPs have feelings, no matter how passive-aggressively stifled.
— Darren Patrick Blaney, PhD
Special Thanks to Laurence Re, Burton Tedesco, Michiko Kitayama-Skinner, Michael Bush, Dr. cfrancis blackchild, David Williams, Jennifer Burke, Pablo Souki and Eric Nelson