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The Wayside Motor Inn
The Wayside Motor Inn
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Author: A.R. Gurney Publisher: Dramatists Play Service (cover may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 78 Pub. Date: 1978 Edition: Acting ISBN-10: 0822212250 ISBN-13: 9780822212256 Cast Size: 4 female, 6 male
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About
the Play:
The Wayside Motor Inn is a full-length drama by A.R.
Gurney. Outside Boston, ten people – some strangers, some not –
struggle with the circumstances that have brought them to The Wayside
Motor Inn. With old grudges and new feuds threatening the travellers'
peace, The Wayside Motor Inn is a funny and moving play that
examines the tenuous space between loneliness and connection, and the
fragile framework of the American Dream.
The Wayside Motor Inn is a truly original and creatively
structured play, which employs a highly inventive theatrical form to
convey its conclusions about the impersonality and, too often, the
futility of modern American life. The scene is a motel outside of
Boston: a depersonalized, antiseptic environment into which, one
after the other, come five sets of travellers. There is a well-to-do
couple on a visit to their married daughter who just had a baby; a
lonely salesman looking for a bit of romance with the inn's waitress
to temper the boredom of a business trip; an overbearing father and
his latently rebellious son en route to a Harvard interview; a pair
of liberated college students intent on a weekend of passion; and an
embittered doctor and his wife who are divorcing and meeting to
divide up assets. Although the various occupants of the motel room
are often on stage at the same time, they neither see nor hear each
other, and it is quickly evident that their shared location is, in
reality, five different rooms. But, as each of the individual
dramatic situations is developed, the irony, humour and pathos which
they evoke is heightened by the silent proximity of the other
characters – building, in the end, to a kaleidoscopic pattern in
which their separate stories blend and re-blend into a subtle but
telling indictment of the shortcomings, large and small, of life in
contemporary America.
The Wayside Motor Inn premiered in 1977 at the prestigious
Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) off-Broadway in New York City. Since then the
play has
been produced at
professional theatres, including
a 2014 revival at The Signature Theatre off-Broadway where the
response was so strong the play was extended for several weeks,
and has been mounted by colleges and community theatres.
Cast: 4 female, 6 male
What people say:
"It's a lofty topic, and
Gurney has the talent and intelligence to tackle it." —
Cue Magazine
"…it is the cumulative
effect of the episodes that matters – that and his humor and the
liveliness of his writing." — The New Yorker
"A.R. Gurney has
given a true gift of theatre – insight into other people's lives
while showing the struggles we all share." — Show
Business
About the Playwright:
A.R. Gurney (1930-2017) is known as one of the most
prolific and produced playwrights in America. His work focuses
primarily on the issues and realities of middle-class American life
and has been produced on international theatre stages for more than
50 years. He is also the author of three novels and a two-time
Pulitzer Prize for Drama nominee, the recipient of the Drama Desk
Award, and the Award of Merit from the Academy and Institute of Arts
and Letters.
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