In 1981, A.R. Gurney's career making play, "The Dining Room" was produced at Studio Theatre of Playwrights Horizons. A huge hit despite its subject matter—WASPs—it was the reason Gurney was able to lessen his teaching load and become the prolific full time playwright that he's become over the past two decades.
Gurney, who admits to WASPish tendencies himself, never treats his characters with condescension. Once essential to family life the dining room was where families gathered for far more than feasting. These WASPs aren't the bee cousins but stiff-upper-lip, Yankee sorts in New England celebrating holidays and birthdays. They run the gamut from pre-preppy and post-preppy and their behavior from content and loving to rebellious and miserable.
Wood River High School Performing Arts Academy will stage 'The Dining Room' at 7 p.m. tonight and Saturday, Dec. 6, and Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 8 and 9 at the Community Campus theater in Hailey.
This Pulitzer Prize nominated play is a genuine treat evoking family life, past and present and the death of a certain lifestyle. Directed by Karl Nordstrom, the Performing Arts Academy director, the cast will portray more than 50 characters spanning the century and a single day at the same time.
The cast includes Sean Dahlman, Fidel DeLeon, Sarah Hope, Karl Nordstrom, Ross Cooper, Gene Bohl, Cam Cooper, Meggie Jensen, Conor Zaft, Jeff Maxwell, Jared Levasseur, Alex Kunz, Lauren Reutter, Erin Burbank, Dixie Hoyt, Mackenzie Brown, Miranda Williams, Racheal Stark, Syndey Brower, Faith Coben and Chris Fuller.
"I love Gurney's work," Nordstrom said. "I was in the play myself in college, and I've used parts of this in scene work. Right now, because of the improv the students are doing with Scott Creighton in the Performing Academy, I thought this was really something different and it would stretch them. This is a real classic slice of American realism. It's focused on relationships, text and sub-text. The students were wary but I told them as they got to know the play they'd fall in love with the characters. And they have."
Nordstrom, who replaced longtime WRHS drama teacher Becky Miller, is 1988 graduate of Wood River High School. He earned his Masters of Fine Arts and Theater Performance from the University of Idaho.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students available at the door.
Conor Zaft and Faith Coben play several characters in A.R. Gurney’s "The Dining Room."
