Upper School
Upper school students performed a stellar sold-out production of The Dining Room by A.R Gurney on December 10th and 11th. The Dining Room is one of A.R Gurney’s most eloquent plays, first produced Off-Broadway in New York City three decades ago. It offers up a series of snapshots of a vanishing culture, but the characters are very much alive on stage. Our talented cast of nine actors portrayed 25 different characters throughout the course of the play.
Theater can reveal the truth about life. I find this to be very true about this play. Though it is set in a wealthy economic stratum, the situations are universal – often quite funny and very moving. The play is primarily about relationships – the beginning of a new one, the disintegration of an old one, and some that are in between. The function of a dining room comes under scrutiny for its continued relevance today when society embraces convenience, speed, and technology. As the role of the dining room fades, so does the civility and grace inherent to the traditions of that room. For some those traditions are suffocating, burdened with expectation. For others those traditions represent a coming together, celebration and family. The Dining Room asks us to inspect what lies beneath. In coming to see, we find truth, and in finding truth, we are confronted, comforted, and eventually healed.
Stay tuned for an announcement about our spring musical which will be performed on May 20th and 21st at the upper school.
Sharon Counts
Upper Division Theater Teacher
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