Large family gatherings may still be fraught as we sort out who’s vaccinated and who’s not. But being a fly on the wall for the generations of WASPs in A.R. Gurney‘s 1981 play The Dining Room might make you take a fresh look at family dynamics.
When the stay-at-home order went into effect, DeRogatis, like a lot of theater practitioners, found her plans tossed and gutted. But when some back pay from unemployment hit her bank account, DeRogatis says, “I was like, OK, I’m going to buy myself one nice thing. And originally I was going to buy a PlayStation. But then Lori Lightfoot was like, ‘Hey, uh, I think we can do outdoor theater and stuff this summer.’ And no one was really doing it. So I thought, well, what if instead of a PlayStation, we buy the rights to a play? So I did.”
“I think for me as a director picking shows, I always find it important to pick shows that feel timely and connect to people, especially in a time where things feel so isolated,” says DeRogatis. “So what I was thinking with The Dining Room, you know, we’ve been spending so much time in our spaces, our individual spaces, studio apartments, what have you. And I think that our spaces that we live in say a lot about us and they’re our own little corners of the universe. And I was thinking about how my studio apartment has gone from like the place where I sleep, to my rehearsal room, and the room where I have big Zoom parties, and my classroom.” (She began a new teaching job this past fall.)
Possibilities has emphasized diverse casting in its productions, but for The Dining Room, DeRogatis notes that “We didn’t want to take a person of color and put them in this role that puts them in a negative light. So we did go with a more WASPy cast, because we’re making a commentary on this lifestyle.”
And with The Dining Room, Possibilities lets us travel through time in one room. v
4/2-4/10: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM CDT, reservations available through eventcombo.com, $15 suggested donation.
