From left, Jessica Motyka of Vernon Hills, Hannah Zoibi of Lake Zurich, Mandy Stebbins of Wauconda and Vidal Gonzalez of Mundelein, perform in “The Dining Room,” opening Sept. 16 in Mundelein. (Kirk Players)

“The Dining Room,” written by A. R. Gurney, takes the audience on a journey through various life stages. The show, opening Sept. 16, also gives actors an unusual opportunity to portray a wide variety of characters of different ages in the same room while seated at a beautiful, wooden dining room table.

“The stories range from funny to rueful to somber, each told within about eight minutes,” said Peter Grassl, director of the show and president of Kirk Players. “It’s an ‘if-these-walls-could- talk’ kind of experience,” he said. “It’s a beautiful piece of work.”

Nine actors are portraying 58 different characters across 18 vignettes. In some cases, the vignettes overlap, with one scene ending as another is beginning at different ends of the table.

The logistics of placing characters in different vignettes and ensuring they have time to change costumes and get to their next scene is challenging.

“But I love a puzzle,” Grassl said. “I put together a grid with all the scenes and the names of all the actors and plugged them in on what parts they played and when. An actor might portray a 5-year-old at a birthday party and then later walk out on stage and be an 85-year-old grandfather. It’s really amazing,” Grassl said. “These are beautiful little stories.”

The play features the upper-middle class White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture in northeastern United States between 1920 and 1980. “Some vignettes do relate specifically to the WASP culture,” Grassl said.

“There’s one vignette where a woman shows all of her fine dining pieces, and her nephew is filming it for an anthropological study. Gurney does see WASP as a vanishing culture phenomenon.”

But one of the author’s main intents is to show a slice of time, Grassl said.

“One thing about this play is that something will resonate with everybody who sees it. These are relatable, heartwarming stories told through the culture of the WASPs, but not necessarily aimed at dissecting the culture,” he said.

Vignettes include teens sneaking into a liquor cabinet when their parents aren’t at home, 5-year-olds at a birthday party while two adults reveal a secret and Thanksgiving dinner with a family member who is losing her memory.

Part of the fun of directing and acting in the play is placing the actors in their different roles. In one vignette, a mother and daughter argue about whether the youngster should attend dance classes or go see a play.

“The scene was fine, but then I thought why not have the younger actress play the mother and the older actress play the daughter. The actors literally leaped into the air, excited about the opportunity,” he said. “They really love trying to be completely different people.”

Grassl also has adults being children acting up at a birthday party. “They really do an amazing job of making people believe they’re 5-year-olds. It’s so fun. It’s so infectious,” he said. “I’ve tried to mix it up and that was Gurney’s intent,” he said.

The play is not meant to portray a time period from beginning to end, he said. “It’s not linear,” he said. “It’s a little bit ethereal, imaginative. It’s supposed to be impressions.”

Grassl said the Kirk Players searched long and hard for the centerpiece of the show — the dining room table. “We found a beautiful table for sale,” he said. “It’s elegant. It has claw feet. It’s made of dark solid wood. It has leather felt covers to put on top of the table to protect. We bought it from a couple in Vernon Hills who were remodeling their dining room.”

Proceeds from the Saturday show will be given to the Northern Illinois Food Bank. Proceeds from The Kirk Players’ last production, “The Diary of Anne Frank,” were given to the Holocaust Museum.

Since the Kirk Players was founded in 1966, cast and production crew volunteer their time knowing that the proceeds will be given to good causes, he said.

When: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 16-17; 2 p.m. Sept. 18

Where: Mundelein High School, 1350 W. Hawley St., Mundelein

Information: 847-521-6192; kirkplayers.org

Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.