A.J. Gurney, Jr.'s "The Dining Room" is a
series of french scenes that show the decline of the White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant (WASP) through a day spent in a dining room that represents
dining rooms across time in America. However, it's also a look at
intimate relationships and how they have changed with the culture. One
of the scenes early in the second act, is a scene between Jim, in his
late sixties, and his daughter Meg, who is about thirty. After a series
of messy relationships, Meg wants to move home with her three small
children and her father doesn't want her to.
In this short scene, Gurney effectively uses "interpretation and misinterpretation.... to carry the essential freight of theme and characterization" (Downs and Russin 145). When Meg tells Jim that she's left her husband, her father interprets it to mean she's taken a vacation from her husband, because he doesn't want to hear what she is really saying (Gurney 339) and he doesn't want to have the conversation that he knows is coming. He tries to avoid the conversation he knows is coming by trying to not be alone with his daughter, and when that's impossible, tries to steel himself for it with alcohol.
Another technique Gurney uses in this conversation, is to weave the exposition into the conflict. When Jim reveals that he had an affair and that Meg's mother ran off the "other woman" it is exposition, but it's also part of the reasoning behind his argument: that Meg should toss the other woman out and try to make things work with her husband. Similarly, Meg explains that this won't work because she's not only had an affair of her own with a married man, but also with a woman.
Guerney uses dialogue to support the scene but also the overall theme of the play. When Meg says "I want to... do all those things you and Mother used to do with all of us. I want start start again, Dad," she is talking about her own life; she's also longing for the WASP culture that doesn't exist anymore. She says that she can't go back to the way it was in her married life and Jim says that he can't either. He means that he can't go back to the way things were in his marriage as well as to the way things were culturally when he was raising Meg and her siblings.
A.R. Gurney, Jr. is a master at using dialogue to convey characterization and theme. "The Dining Room" gives examples of how to do this over and over in each of the scenes of the play. I'm hopeful that I can learn from him and employ similar technique in my playwriting.
Downs, William Missouri and Robin U. Russin. Naked Playwriting: The Art, The Craft, and the Life Laid Bare. 1st ed. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2004. Print.
Gurney, A.R., Jr. "The Dining Room." Plays From the Contemporary American Theater, ed. Brooks McNamara. New York: Signet Classic, 1988. 339-342. Print.
In this short scene, Gurney effectively uses "interpretation and misinterpretation.... to carry the essential freight of theme and characterization" (Downs and Russin 145). When Meg tells Jim that she's left her husband, her father interprets it to mean she's taken a vacation from her husband, because he doesn't want to hear what she is really saying (Gurney 339) and he doesn't want to have the conversation that he knows is coming. He tries to avoid the conversation he knows is coming by trying to not be alone with his daughter, and when that's impossible, tries to steel himself for it with alcohol.
Another technique Gurney uses in this conversation, is to weave the exposition into the conflict. When Jim reveals that he had an affair and that Meg's mother ran off the "other woman" it is exposition, but it's also part of the reasoning behind his argument: that Meg should toss the other woman out and try to make things work with her husband. Similarly, Meg explains that this won't work because she's not only had an affair of her own with a married man, but also with a woman.
Guerney uses dialogue to support the scene but also the overall theme of the play. When Meg says "I want to... do all those things you and Mother used to do with all of us. I want start start again, Dad," she is talking about her own life; she's also longing for the WASP culture that doesn't exist anymore. She says that she can't go back to the way it was in her married life and Jim says that he can't either. He means that he can't go back to the way things were in his marriage as well as to the way things were culturally when he was raising Meg and her siblings.
A.R. Gurney, Jr. is a master at using dialogue to convey characterization and theme. "The Dining Room" gives examples of how to do this over and over in each of the scenes of the play. I'm hopeful that I can learn from him and employ similar technique in my playwriting.
Works Cited
Gurney, A.R., Jr. "The Dining Room." Plays From the Contemporary American Theater, ed. Brooks McNamara. New York: Signet Classic, 1988. 339-342. Print.
