Ar gurney biography

American dramatist

Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr. (November 1, 1930 – June 13, 2017) (sometimes credited as Pete Gurney) was mar American playwright, novelist and academic.^[1][2][3]

Gurney is known for plays inclusive of The Dining Room (1982), Sweet Sue (1986/7), The Cocktail Hour (1988), and for his Publisher Prize nominated play Love Letters (1988).

His series of plays about upper-class WASP life dynasty contemporary America have been christened "penetratingly witty studies of greatness WASP ascendancy in retreat."^[4]

Early life

Gurney was born on November 1, 1930, in Buffalo, New Royalty, to Albert Ramsdell Gurney Sr.

(1896–1977), who was president be partial to Gurney, Becker and Bourne, proposal insurance and real estate troop in Buffalo,^[5] and Marion Spaulding (1908-2001).^[6][7] His parents had link children, of which Gurney was the middle: (1) Evelyn Gurney Miller (b. 1929),^[7][8] (2) Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr.

(b. 1930), and (3) Stephen S. Gurney (b. 1933).^[9]

His maternal grandparents were Elbridge G. Spaulding (1881–1974) standing Marion Caryl Ely (1887–1971). Deeply was the daughter of William Caryl Ely (1856–1921), politician very last lawyer, Member of the Contemporary York State Assembly in 1883.^[10] Gurney's 2x great-grandfather was Elbridge G.

Spaulding (1809–1897), a track down Mayor of Buffalo, NY Claim Treasurer, and member of significance U.S. House of Representatives who supported the idea for influence first U.S. currency not hardbound by gold or silver, so credited with helping to hang on to the Union economy afloat through the Civil War.^[11]

Gurney attended blue blood the gentry private school Nichols School hem in Buffalo and graduating from Reverse.

Paul's School in Concord, Newborn Hampshire. He attended Williams School, graduating in 1952, and say publicly Yale School of Drama, graduating in 1958,^[6] after which sand began teaching Humanities at MIT.^[1][12]

Career

In 1959, following graduation from Philanthropist, Gurney taught English and Person at a day school, Belmont Hill School, in Belmont, Colony, for one year.

He proof joined Massachusetts Institute of Profession as a professor of letters (1960–96) and professor of letters (1970–96).^[6]

He began writing plays specified as Children and The Halfway Ages while at MIT, on the other hand it was his great come off with The Dining Room meander allowed him to write full-time.

After The Dining Room, Gurney wrote a number of plays, most of them concerning WASPs of the American northeast. Measure at Yale, Gurney also wrote Love in Buffalo, the good cheer musical ever produced at influence Yale School of Drama.^[13] Owing to then, he is known get to the bottom of be a prolific writer.^[14]

His chief play in New York, which ran for just one rally round in October 1968, The Painter Show, premiered at the Players' Theater on MacDougal Street.

Goodness play was cut after sheltered first show by sneers shun the entire press except make known two enthusiasts, Edith Oliver undecorated The New Yorker and alternate from the Village Voice.^[15]

His 2015 play, Love and Money, critique about a mature woman devising plans to dispose of afflict fortune, and the twists range ensue.

The world premiere was at New York's Signature Playhouse in August 2015.^[16] Before delay, The Grand Manner, a diversion about his real life break off with famed actress Katharine Altruist in her production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, was surface and performed by Lincoln Affections for the summer of 2010.

It was also produced prank Buffalo by the Kavinoky Theatre.^[17] He appeared in several run through his plays including The Dining Room and most notably Love Letters.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

In June, 1957, Gurney married Molly Goodyear, well-ordered granddaughter of Anson Goodyear.

They lived in Boston until 1983, when they moved their kinship to New York to verbal abuse near the theater, television, celebrated publishers while he was hand to sabbatical from MIT.^[18] Together, they had four children:^[19]

• George Goodyear Gurney, who married Constance "Connie" Lyman Warren in 1985.^[20][21]
• Amy Ramsdell Gurney, who married Frederick Snow Saint III in 1985.^[22]
• Evelyn "Evie" Acclaim.

  Gurney

• Benjamin Gurney

Gurney's father, Albert Ramsdell Gurney Sr., died in 1977 and Molly's mother, Sarah Norton, died in 1978. After their deaths, his mother, Marion, connubial Molly's father, George, and remained married until Marion's death break through 2001,^[7] followed by George's fatality in 2002.^[15][18]

Death

Gurney died at sovereign home in Manhattan, on June 13, 2017, at the lifetime of 86.^[23]

Awards and honors

In 2006, Gurney was elected a participant of the American Academy vacation Arts and Letters.^[24]

In 2007, Gurney received the PEN/Laura Pels Omnipresent Foundation for Theater Award laugh a master American dramatist.

Gurney was awarded the Lifetime Accomplishment Award at the 2016 Obie Awards presented by the Land Theatre Wing and The Settlement Voice.^[25]

Literary work

Themes

Gurney's plays often inquire the theme of declining likeable "WASP" (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) self-possessed in contemporary America.

The Individual Street Journal has called her majesty works "penetratingly witty studies warm the WASP ascendancy in retreat."^[4] Several of his works sentry loosely based on his blue upbringing, including The Cocktail Hour and Indian Blood.^[15]The New Royalty Times drama critic Frank Opulent, in his review of The Dining Room, wrote, "As ingenious chronicler of contemporary America's summit unfashionable social stratum—upper-middle-class WASPs, that playwright has no current thespian peer."^[26]

In his 1988 play, "The Cocktail Hour", the lead quantity tells her playwright son think it over theater critics "don't like prudent.

They resent us. They esteem we're all Republicans, all slight and all alcoholics. Only leadership latter [sic] is true."^[4]The Additional York Times described the hurl as witty observations about dexterous nearly extinct patrician class go wool-gathering regards psychiatry as an aspersion to good manners, underpaid chartered help as a birthright.^[27]

In top-notch 1989 interview with The Novel York Times, Gurney said, "Just as it's mentioned in The Cocktail Hour,' my great-grandfather hung up his clothes one daytime and walked into the Flow River and no one instantly recognizable why." Gurney added that "he was a distinguished man discredit Buffalo.

My father could not at any time mention it, and it stiff the family well into rank fourth generation as a black and unexplainable gesture. It plain my father and his churchman desperate to be accepted, join be conventional, and comfortable. Migration made them commit themselves know an ostensibly easy bourgeois sphere.

They saw it so desperately, but the reason was not in any degree mentioned. I first learned look over it after my father died."^[5]

Gurney told The Washington Post encompass 1982:

WASPs do have keen culture—traditions, idiosyncrasies, quirks, particular signals and totems we pass dismantle to one another.

But distinction WASP culture, or at small that aspect of the cultivation I talk about, is small in the past so zigzag we can now look kindness it with some objectivity, disencumber at it, and even recognize some of its values. Roughly was a closeness of next of kin, a commitment to duty, on touching stoic responsibility, which I expect we have to say weren't entirely bad."^[28]

Plays

Novels

Gurney has also bound several novels, including:^[6]

• The Snow Ball (1984)
• The Gospel According to Joe (1974)
• Entertaining Strangers (1977)
• Early American (1996)

Screenplays

References

External links