Born in 1930, Albert Ramsdell Gurney, Jr. grew up in Buffalo, New York. He attended St. Paul’s School, Williams College, and Yale University, institutional hatcheries for the people Gurney has said he “like[s] to write about—the American East Coast Bourgeoisie, the much-maligned so-called WASPs.” In an interview with Arvid Sponberg, he said that, “I’m writing about change . . . . all the time. Social change and cultural change.” Often the social and cultural change charted in his plays is the decline of those “much-maligned . . . WASPS”—the dwindling authority of their customs and values, the slippage of their political influence.
The term WASP entered the language in the mid 1960’s as an acronym for “Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” or, reduntantly, “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” (Aren’t virtually all Anglo-Saxons white?) In any case, the acronym has endured, accruing in its history a slew of negative connotations. As Wikipedia informs us, the term refers to a “closed group of high-status White Americans of English Protestant ancestry . . . . believed to control disproportionate social and financial power.” Moreover, the acronym often serves as a mild insult, “usually indicat[ing] . . . disapproval of the group's excessive power in society.” On the other hand, the same source tells us that, “Scholars agree that the group's influence has waned since the end of World War II, with the growing influence of Jews, Catholics, African Americans, Asians, and other former outsiders.”
We noted above that the schools Gurney attended were well-tended preserves of WASP culture. This was so of St. Paul’s and Williams, and certainly true of most of the schools within Yale University—law, arts and sciences, medicine, divinity. But Gurney didn’t attend one of these mainstream programs. Instead he enrolled in the School of Drama, a detour off the path usually trod by the “East Coast bourgeoisie” to which he belonged. So even in graduate school, he finds an ambiguous identity, one that is both fully WASP—Yalie—while incipiently deviant—man of the theater. An identity that anticipates the ambiguous feelings he expresses in his plays about the social world that shaped him.
After completing his degree in playwriting, he began a long career as a member of the humanities faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For some twenty-five years, he spent the academic year teaching dramatic literature, and the summers writing plays. In 1982, as he says in the biographical section of his website he, “moved to New York . . . to devote more time to writing for the theatre.” The move paid off, 1982 being the year in which he achieved his first major New York success as a playwright, The Dining Room. He has gone on to a highly prolific career, listing some 54 works on his website, including plays, novels, and librettos for operas and musicals.
About The Cocktail Hour, which premiered in San Diego in 1988, he has written:
This is a play about a play, and so could be called self-reflexive. Yet despite its post-modern tone, it is probably the most personal thing I had written up to this time. The play tries to work within the traditions of a comedy of manners, and simultaneously challenge those traditions as outmoded if not destructive. Because the details are so close to home, I promised my family not to let it be produced in Buffalo, my home town, until after both my parents were dead. I personally don’t feel that it’s terribly tough on either one of them, but the world I grew up in treasures its personal privacy and doesn’t enjoy being displayed on stage. And, of course, that’s the big issue in the play.
Born, raised, and educated in a period of unchallenged WASP ascendancy, Gurney came of age as a dramatist when that party was ending. He dramatizes this social transition in a number of his plays as a tension between generations, with old WASPS and their middle-aged offspring squaring off against each other. The former look back fondly and longingly at a mode of life that has largely vanished; the latter, while sharing some of this nostalgia, have mostly come to accept the critical view of the WASP world held by those “former outsiders” who are taking over. This leads to conflict between the generations, and conflict leads to drama.
Among Gurney’s other plays are Sweet Sue (1986), Love Letters (1988), Another Antigone (1988), and Sylvia (1995).
The term WASP entered the language in the mid 1960’s as an acronym for “Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” or, reduntantly, “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” (Aren’t virtually all Anglo-Saxons white?) In any case, the acronym has endured, accruing in its history a slew of negative connotations. As Wikipedia informs us, the term refers to a “closed group of high-status White Americans of English Protestant ancestry . . . . believed to control disproportionate social and financial power.” Moreover, the acronym often serves as a mild insult, “usually indicat[ing] . . . disapproval of the group's excessive power in society.” On the other hand, the same source tells us that, “Scholars agree that the group's influence has waned since the end of World War II, with the growing influence of Jews, Catholics, African Americans, Asians, and other former outsiders.”
We noted above that the schools Gurney attended were well-tended preserves of WASP culture. This was so of St. Paul’s and Williams, and certainly true of most of the schools within Yale University—law, arts and sciences, medicine, divinity. But Gurney didn’t attend one of these mainstream programs. Instead he enrolled in the School of Drama, a detour off the path usually trod by the “East Coast bourgeoisie” to which he belonged. So even in graduate school, he finds an ambiguous identity, one that is both fully WASP—Yalie—while incipiently deviant—man of the theater. An identity that anticipates the ambiguous feelings he expresses in his plays about the social world that shaped him.
After completing his degree in playwriting, he began a long career as a member of the humanities faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For some twenty-five years, he spent the academic year teaching dramatic literature, and the summers writing plays. In 1982, as he says in the biographical section of his website he, “moved to New York . . . to devote more time to writing for the theatre.” The move paid off, 1982 being the year in which he achieved his first major New York success as a playwright, The Dining Room. He has gone on to a highly prolific career, listing some 54 works on his website, including plays, novels, and librettos for operas and musicals.
About The Cocktail Hour, which premiered in San Diego in 1988, he has written:
This is a play about a play, and so could be called self-reflexive. Yet despite its post-modern tone, it is probably the most personal thing I had written up to this time. The play tries to work within the traditions of a comedy of manners, and simultaneously challenge those traditions as outmoded if not destructive. Because the details are so close to home, I promised my family not to let it be produced in Buffalo, my home town, until after both my parents were dead. I personally don’t feel that it’s terribly tough on either one of them, but the world I grew up in treasures its personal privacy and doesn’t enjoy being displayed on stage. And, of course, that’s the big issue in the play.
Born, raised, and educated in a period of unchallenged WASP ascendancy, Gurney came of age as a dramatist when that party was ending. He dramatizes this social transition in a number of his plays as a tension between generations, with old WASPS and their middle-aged offspring squaring off against each other. The former look back fondly and longingly at a mode of life that has largely vanished; the latter, while sharing some of this nostalgia, have mostly come to accept the critical view of the WASP world held by those “former outsiders” who are taking over. This leads to conflict between the generations, and conflict leads to drama.
Among Gurney’s other plays are Sweet Sue (1986), Love Letters (1988), Another Antigone (1988), and Sylvia (1995).