Christopher Ferdinand Durang was an American playwright known for works of outrageous and often absurd comedy.
23 Facts About Christopher Durang
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Christopher Durang's work was especially popular in the 1980s, though his career seemed to get a second wind in the late 1990s.
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Christopher Durang was a past co-director of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.
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Christopher Durang was born on January 2,1949, in Montclair, New Jersey, the son of two WWII veterans, architect Francis Ferdinand Christopher Durang Jr.
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Christopher Durang grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, and attended Catholic schools: Our Lady of Peace School and Delbarton.
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Christopher Durang discussed the particular frame of mind that requires the viewer to distance himself from the horrific episode of human suffering and pain; he explained:.
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Christopher Durang suggested that his form of humor requires a double-consciousness, an ability to register scenes of cruelty or pain, while simultaneously comprehending the humor.
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Christopher Durang's plays have been performed nationwide, including on Broadway and Off-Broadway.
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Together with Marsha Norman, Christopher Durang directed The Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard School from 1984 to 2016, teaching playwrights Joshua Harmon and Noah Haidle, as well as Pulitzer-Prize winning David Lindsay-Abaire, who succeeded Christopher Durang as co-director.
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Christopher Durang performed as an actor for both stage and screen.
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Christopher Durang first came to prominence in his Off-Broadway satirical review Das Lusitania Songspiel, which he performed with friend and fellow Yale alum Sigourney Weaver.
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Christopher Durang denounced the Robert Altman 1987 film adaptation of Beyond Therapy, calling it "horrific".
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Christopher Durang wrote a number of unproduced screenplays, including The Nun Who Shot Liberty Valance, The House of Husbands, and The Adventures of Lola.
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Christopher Durang played the part of The Waiter in that production.
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Christopher Durang appeared as himself on the October 11,1986 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by his longtime friend Sigourney Weaver.
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In 2016, Christopher 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, it primarily impeded his ability to process language, though it subsequently affected his short-term memory.
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Christopher Durang gradually withdrew from public life before his condition was publicly announced in 2022.
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Christopher Durang died from complications of aphasia at his Pennsylvania home on April 2,2024, at the age of 75.
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Christopher Durang received Obie Awards for Sister Mary Ignatius, The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Betty's Summer Vacation.
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Christopher Durang received a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for A History of the American Film, and he won a Tony Award for Best Play in 2013 for his play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.
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Christopher Durang was awarded numerous fellowships and high-profile grants including a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller Foundation, the CBS Playwriting Fellowship, the Lecomte du Nouy Foundation grant, and the Kenyon Festival Theatre Playwriting Prize.
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Christopher Durang was a member of the council for the Dramatists Guild of America, and was named the 2024 recipient of the guild's lifetime achievement award.
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Christopher Durang was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2006 for Miss Witherspoon.