Charting the evolution of a dinner party, The Dinner Party begins with the awkwardness of a group of people who have specific, varied and recognizable, somewhat stock social anxieties—the controlling hostess, the angry guy, the phony, the clown, the foreigner, the late guy and the stoic—and culminates in the creation of that slipperiest of artistic collaborations, the successful party.  The Dinner Party celebrates the ability of a simple dinner party to transcend the individual limitations of its participants and take on a life of its own.