The Playwright: ABOUT CHRISTOPHER DURANG

By David Garnes

Christopher Durang is a contemporary, Tony Award-winning American playwright. Best-known for his absurdist, funny, and sometimes dark plays, he has been performed on Broadway and especially Off-Broadway, as well as extensively in regional and community theater.

Beginning in 1980 with Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie Award winner), his plays include Beyond Therapy; A History of the American Film (Tony Award nominee); The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award); The Actor's Nightmare, Betty's Summer Vacation (Obie Award); Miss Witherspoon (Pulitzer Prize finalist); Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Tony Award for Best Play); and many other full-length and one-act plays.

Durang has said:

"I exaggerate…things further, and then I present it in a way that is funny, and for those of us who find it funny, it has to do with a very clear suspension of disbelief. It is a play, after all, with acted characters; it allows us a distance we couldn't have in reality. To me this distance allows me to find some rather serious topics funny."

To that end, Durang's plays have reflected themes involving Roman Catholicism, the movies, homosexuality, mental health, American culture, and violence, usually filtered through a lens of absurdist humor. He has been awarded many fellowships, grants, and honors during his long, productive career, including the PEN/ Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award in 2012.

As New York Times critic Ben Brantley once wrote: "Durang is an essential and affecting presence in the American theater."

Christopher Durang received a BFA from Harvard and an MFA from Yale School of Drama. His first professional production was The Idiots Karamazov and was performed at Yale Repertory, featuring then Yale student Meryl Streep. He first came to public attention with the off-Broadway review Das Lusitania Songspiel, a collaboration with his friend, actress Sigourney Weaver, who also appeared in the original production of VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE. 

Once deemed “our Poet Laureate of the Absurd” by the New York Observer, Durang’s plays often have silly, illogical elements to them. For example, in Laughing Wild, a woman has a mental breakdown because a man is standing in her way in the tuna fish aisle. As a master of irony and especially black satire, Durang is known for his wicked humor that often touches on serious issues like alcoholism, mental illness, divorce, disease, and religion. The audience is guaranteed a good laugh, as well as a funny and insightful glimpse into human nature.