were exploding, there were assassinations. Everyone
was dying, or it seemed that way. So I felt I was part
of a culture that was very much on the edge. I think
many of the things I wrote were attempts to go back
to a simpler and easier culture. Scenes from American Life was all about the political pressures in America at that time. But I tried to keep those offstage, and
make the values of my characters so obsolete that I
didn’t need to say it. I just wrote about people who
seemed obsolete, and their obsolescence was made
clear by the environment around them.
Signature: What inspired The Wayside Motor Inn?
AG: I got a little bored writing about WASPs — these
affluent people who were absolutely unaware of what
was going on in the world around them. So I thought
I’d find a way of juxtaposing a number of different
American perspectives at one time. I feel like Wayside
is about WASPs and non-WASPs who are resilient to
change. And I’ve put them in an environment which is
not comforting for them. They’re not in a bar. They’re
not in their own dining room. It was an attempt to
break through a form and tell four or five different
stories at the same time. But that was panned by the
critics at the time. So after that I thought I had to be
more subtle in my experimentation with form.
Signature: Do you feel like the ‘80s, when you wrote
Love Letters and The Dining Room, were a big
turning point for you?
AG: Absolutely. I was down in New York with my
wife on sabbatical from MIT when The Dining Room
became a hit. My wife had gotten a job she loved in the
city — she’s a public health nutritionist — and she didn’t
want to go back to Boston. We had three children in
college at the time. But there was enough income
coming in from The Dining Room, and enough promise
of other things that I had written, that we just decided
to stay in New York, sell our house in Newton, Mass.,
and I’d commute to MIT. Ultimately I didn’t do that.
I did everything I could
to find stories, poems,
anything...just to have the
pleasure of writing plays.
background: A.R. Gurney and his wife, Molly, on their wedding day. left: John Michael Higgins and company in the
Lincoln Center Theater production of Big Bill, 2004. right: Young A.R. Gurney (center) with brother Steve and sister Evelyn.
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