Christopher durang obituary
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Christopher Durang
Christopher Durang is a Tony Award-winning American playwright. He is known for his absurd and outrageous parodies.
Durang was born and raised in New Jersey, and attended Catholic schools through his adolescence--his Catholic upbringing and views on the Roman Catholic Church are often prevalent in his plays. He received his B.A. in English from Harvard University and his M.F.A. in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.
Durang quickly became one of the most successful playwrights of the 1980s, and has sustained popularity in the decades since. His work often verges on parody, dealing critically with issues of child abuse, Roman Catholicism, homosexuality, mental health, and culture. His plays have been performed Broadway, off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. His wide body of work includes such popular plays as: Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie Award winner); Beyond Therapy; Baby With the Bathwater; A History of the American Film (Tony Award nominee for Best Book of a Musical); The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award)
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Christopher Durang
American playwright (1949–2024)
Christopher Ferdinand Durang (January 2, 1949 – April 2, 2024) was an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy. His work was especially popular in the 1980s, though his career seemed to get a second wind in the late 1990s.
Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You was Durang's watershed play as it brought him to national prominence when it won him the Obie Award for Best Playwright (1980). His play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2013. The production was directed by Nicholas Martin, and featured Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen, Billy Magnussen, Shalita Grant and Genevieve Angelson. Durang was a past co-director of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.[1]
Early life and education
Durang was born on January 2, 1949, in Montclair, New Jersey, the son of two WWII veterans, architect Francis Ferdinand Durang Jr. and Patricia Elizabeth Durang (née Mansfield), a secretary.[2& Christopher Durang is a playwright whose plays include A History of the American Film (Tony nomination, Best Book of a Musical, 1978),The Actor’s Nightmare, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie award; off-Bway run 1981-83), Beyond Therapy (on Broadway in 1982, with Dianne Wiest and John Lithgow), Baby with the Bathwater (Playwrights Horizons, 1983), The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Public Theatre, 1985; Obie award, Dramatists Guild Hull Warriner Award), Laughing Wild (Playwrights Horizons, 1987), Durang/Durang (an evening of six plays at Manhattan Theatre Club, 1994, including the Tennessee Williams’ parody, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls), Sex and Longing (Lincoln Center Theatre production at the Cort Theatre, 1996, starring Sigourney Weaver), and Betty’s Summer Vacation (Playwrights Horizons, 1999; Obie award). His most recent works are Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, which premiered at City Theatre in Pittsburgh in 2002. And the musicalAdrift in Macao, with music by Peter Melnick and book and lyrics by Durang, which premiere
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