You never know what you’re going to find when you set off to interview someone, especially someone of achievement who has a public persona.
I have to say I was not pleasantly surprised, but pleasantly gratified when I met last week with playwright A.R. “Pete” Gurney.
The sheer volume of his output — 42 plays, three novels, a libretto and a half-dozen one-act curtain-raisers — is impressive. I admire anyone who can churn out that much and keep on going.
As I write in a Cultural Conversation with Gurney, published in today’s Wall Street Journal, this playwright laureate of the declining WASP reign in America not only just saw his new play, The Grand Manner, open at Lincoln Center Theater — but he also has two more in the wings. Office Hours is on the fall docket at The Flea, and Black Tie will begin in January at Primary Stages. Plus, he’s making notes for the next one.
Gurney told me that he writes the same way most professional writers write: he treats it like a job, is at his desk every weekday at 8:30 a.m., writes for four hours, breaks for lunch, then hits the computer again.
He began using a computer 20 years ago, when his father-in-law gave him an old Radio Shack model. The first play he wrote on it turned out to be Love Letters.
Gurney, as I write in the WSJ, is more innovative that he sometimes gets credits for.
But he doesn’t seem to be upset about that. Though his eyes lit up when I mentioned his innovations, Gurney also volunteered stories that diminished him. And that made me appreciate him even more. There’s a lot to be said for the tradition he represents.