In the dining room of a well-to-do household, a family assembles for breakfast and dinner and for any and all special occasions. A mosaic of scenes — funny, touching, rueful — create an in-depth portrait of a vanishing species: the upper-middle-class WASP.

In A. R. Gurney’s “The Dining Room,” actors change roles, personalities and ages with virtuoso skill as they portray a wide variety of characters, from little boys to stern grandfathers, and from giggling teenage girls to Irish housemaids. Each vignette introduces a new set of people and events: A father lectures his son on grammar and politics; a boy returns from boarding school to discover his mother’s infidelity; a senile grandmother doesn’t recognize her own sons at Christmas dinner; a daughter, her marriage a shambles, pleads to return home.

Six actors portray more than 50 characters in the Dreamweavers production of “The Dining Room,” which opens Friday.

Directed by Jaye Petrick, they delineate the dying lifestyle of wealthy WASPdom, and the now neglected room that was once a vital center of family life in a play the New York Post called “hilarious and touching ... as comic sketch crazily succeeds comic sketch a whole pattern of American life emerges …” and the New York Times described as “often funny and rueful and, by the end, very moving.”

Performance dates for “The Dining Room” are Nov. 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 and 23. Friday and Saturday shows are at 8 p.m. and Sunday matinees are at 2 p.m.

Tickets are $20 general admission and $18 for students, seniors and military.

At Friday’s opening night gala Rustridge Ranch & Winery will be pouring its wines.

Call 255-LIVE (5483) to record your reservation.

Auditions coming up

Auditions for the next Dreamweavers’ production, “Murder at the Howard Johnson’s” by Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick are Nov. 10 and 11 (if needed) at 7 p.m. Debbie Baumann will direct this suspense comedy, which has roles for two men and one woman of any age. The audition format will be cold readings from the script and some improv. The play opens in January for a three-weekend run.