1st Edition

A.R. Gurney

Edited By Arvid F. Sponberg Copyright 2004

    This is the first full-length study devoted to the art of A.R. Gurney, a major contemporary American playwright who has written over thirty plays, including Love Letters. This volume brings together original interviews with Gurney and four actors and a director who have worked closely with him, as well as essays by leading theater scholars on the range of Gurney's work.

    General Editor's Note Preface Introduction Interviews A. R. Gurney John Cunningham Holland Taylor Debra Mooney John Tillinger Essays Indeterminacy as Tragic Fate: Issues of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in Gurney, Mark William Rocha Where Does the WASP Keep Its Sting? The Dynamics of Anger in the Plays of A.R. Gurney Ervene Gulley The Dining Room: A Tocquevillian Take on the Decline of WASP Culture Bruce McConachie What I Did Last Summer: Realizing One's Potential Laura Miller Absent Fathers, Transient Sons: Miller, Inge, and Gurney Arvid F. Sponberg Entering the Fourth Dimension: Gurneys Sweet Sue Brenda Gordon The Allusive A. R. Gurney Brenda Murphy Gurney's Sylvia: What Oft Was Thought JoAllen Bradham Inge, Gurney, and Northrop Frye's 'The Argument of Comedy' Arvid F. Sponberg Articles by A.R. Gurney A Sacred Place, Journal of Architectural Education, November 1975 Pushing the Walls of Dramatic Form, The New York Times, July 27, 1986 The Dinner Party, American Heritage. 39 (September-October 1988) Conversation Piece, Newsweek, June 26, 1989 Critical Condition, American Theatre. June 1991, 24-7 When the Final Act Is Only the Beginning, The New York Times, October 27, 1991 Shaw, the Eternal Schoolmaster, Can Still Be Wise, New York Times, January 31, 1993 Coming Home to a Musical That Sounds Like America, The New York Times, September 8, 1996 Afterword: A Cue for A.R. Gurney Chronology Bibliography Contributors

    Biography

    Arvid F. Sponberg