CHRISTOPHER DURANG, born on this date, (d: April 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.
Much of Durang’s style can be attributed to the aesthetic of black comedy, a humor style that offers a fatalistic view of life. Durang discusses the particular frame of mind that requires the viewer to distance himself from the horrific episode of human suffering and pain; he explains: “I exaggerate awful 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.”
Durang lived in Pipersville, Pennsylvania, with his husband, actor/playwright John Augustine. They began their relationship in 1986 and were legally married in 2014.
In 2016, Durang was diagnosed with logopenic progressive aphasia, which is thought to be caused by a form of Alzheimer’s disease; as with all forms of aphasia; ironically, it primarily impeded his ability to process language, though it subsequently affected his short-term memory. Durang gradually withdrew from public life before his condition was publicly announced in 2022. Durang died from complications of aphasia at his home on April 2, 2024, at the age of 75.