Always on his mind:
A.R. Gurney & Buffalo
By Heather Violanti
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Studio Arena production of Gurney’s Far East.
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Gurney wrote in his 1974 play, Children, “One thing I know without a shadow of a doubt. No one, and I mean no one, can live without roots. No one can cut himself off completely from his background. People are like plants. If they are cut, they last for a while, but then they wither and die. That I know.”
Gurney’s roots stretch back to Buffalo in the 1930s and 40s, where he grew up near Delaware Park. He served in the United States Navy during the Korean War, and earned a M.F.A. in Playwriting from Yale Drama School after his return. Eventually, plays such as The Dining Room and Love Letters earned him international fame and recognition. For his writing, Gurney has received a Drama Desk Award, a Rockefeller Award, and two Lucille Lortel Awards. His plays have been produced around the world. Yet through it all, he always remembers the city where he grew up, the place where he first discovered the importance of the arts.
“One thing I know without a shadow of a doubt. No one, and I mean no one, can live without roots. No one can cut himself off completely from his background.”
“It was a wonderful town to grow up in. It had the advantages of a small town because every one knew each other. It had the advantages of a big city because there were a lot of cultural events and a lot of theater. I remember going to the Erlanger, and the Studio Theatre, which is now Studio Arena. There was also tremendous music and art... I’ve always been impressed by the beauty of the place, the coziness of the community, and the vigorous cultural life of the city,” Gurney said in a recent telephone interview.
Buffalo takes center stage in Gurney’s plays. He often chooses the city as a setting, or makes allusions to its landmarks and famous citizens. The setting of Love in Buffalo, the first musical ever produced at Yale Drama School, pays homage to his native town, as does The Fourth Wall, a metatheatrical comedy set in an upstate New York living room.
In his latest work, Buffalo Gal, coming to Studio Arena this month, the city is once again in the limelight. The comedy tells the story of Amanda, a successful television actress who, fallen on hard times, returns to the stage in her hometown of Buffalo, hoping to recharge her career and reconnect with her roots. Art imitates life as she prepares the role of Madame Ranyevskaia, a character from Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard who returns home after many years absence.
Buffalo Gal will be the final play produced at Studio Arena this season, running from March 21 to April 14. Acclaimed Broadway star Betty Buckley will take the role of Amanda, and Gurney-veteran John Tillinger will direct. After Buffalo, the Studio Arena production will move to an off-Broadway theater.
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A. R. Gurney and Director John Tillinger.
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“It’s a tough old town. It’s had bad luck as far as weather is concerned, but it responds to the snow it gets very gallantly. Seven feet of snow in Buffalo causes less trouble than a foot of snow in most other places.”
In writing Buffalo Gal, Gurney said, “I wanted to write something about my home and about the theater. It’s a play about coming home....In many ways, the Buffalo [Amanda] comes home to resembles the world in Chekhov’s play. Both have changed.”
Just as art and life intertwine in the play, so they do in the production. Betty Buckley, who worked with Gurney before in The Fourth Wall, chose the play in part because it echoed a recent event in her life.
“Betty Buckley is not from Buffalo. She’s a Texas gal and a first-rate stage star. Recently, she bought her grandmother’s house, which she found out was up for sale. In the play, Amanda comes home to see her grandmother’s house for sale. Having dealt with that herself, Betty was drawn to the play,” Gurney explains.
The fact that the play is being performed in the city in which it is set adds resonance for the audience.
“It’s an interesting conceit that it takes place on the stage that you are physically watching,” says Gavin Cameron-Webb, Studio Arena’s Artistic Director. “It’s very much about the state of the city and the entire country as it is today. It reflects the proud heritage the city had through much of the twentieth century and questions where it should go. A number of characters in the play have great ties to Buffalo. One of them has an encyclopedic knowledge of Buffalo theater firsts. I don’t think people even here in Buffalo are aware of everything that happened here for the first time, or of all the many important theater people who came from here, such as Katharine Cornell or George Abbott.”
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Studio’s production of Gurney’s Sylvia.
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In the play, Jackie, the director character, hopes Amanda’s presence will enable her production to move to New York. “Jackie needs the New York credit so she can prove herself. She wants to prove she’s a true professional,” says Gurney. In real life, Studio Arena has already well-established its professional reputation in the theater world. But winning the rights to Buffalo Gal, and the subsequent move to New York, represent a major triumph for the theater, as well as enabling it to further its artistic mission.
“We have a commitment to playwrights who write about this city and from this city. Gurney is probably the most prominent playwright from Buffalo. We have produced almost all of his plays, but this is the first time we have produced Gurney’s work prior to New York. Before, this production, the play had only one other production, a short run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.” Cameron-Webb says. “We haven’t moved a show of our own to New York in a long time, so it’s very exciting for us.”
“I tell a story using theatrical elements that call attention to the limits of the form. I don’t pretend they’re not there. I don’t agree with plays and musicals that use huge scenic effects, those plays where people say, Ooh, a real helicopter!’ ‘Ooh, a real chandelier falling down!’”
The realism of Buffalo Gal is in some ways a departure for Gurney, a playwright known for his theatrical conceits and intermingling of past with present. Theatricality is very important to him.
“Today, theater is competing against many dramatic forms—television, movies, CD-Roms, the Internet. Theater is not the only way to see a story performed. In writing plays, I try not to hide the artifice but embrace the very nature of theater. I tell a story using theatrical elements that call attention to the limits of the form. I don’t pretend they’re not there. I don’t agree with plays and musicals that use huge scenic effects, those plays where people say, ‘Ooh, a real helicopter!’ ‘Ooh, a real chandelier falling down!’ Those feel aggressively fake to me. In my theater, let’s pretend a chair is an automobile, a table is a desk.” Gurney says.
In writing Buffalo Gal, Gurney wanted to experiment with his style. “I wanted to experiment with realism. There were complicated thoughts explored in this play, so I wanted to keep my form simple.”
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Buffalo Gal star Betty Buckley.
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In the midst of these practical slices of theater life are frequent quotations from other plays. Amanda breaks into paraphrased scenes from The Cherry Orchard in conversation, while Jackie quotes Shakespeare. Dan, Amanda’s old boyfriend, performs a duet with Amanda from a musical he wrote for them long ago.
Gurney hopes the theatrical setting of Buffalo Gal will enable audiences to appreciate the unique vitality of theater.
“I wanted to show how precious as well as how precarious the theater is. Maybe it’s precious because it is so precarious.”
Heather Violanti, a Buffalo native and graduate student at Yale School of Drama, has written about theatre for The Buffalo News. Her plays have been produced in Baltimore and at the Alleyway Theatre, and last summer, she worked at the Globe Theatre in London.
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