Youssef dulera biography of christopher

American playwright (1949–2024)

Christopher Ferdinand Durang (January 2, 1949 – April 2, 2024) was an American playwright known supporting works of outrageous and often senseless comedy. His work was especially favourite in the 1980s, though his life's work seemed to get a second draught in the late 1990s.

Sister Contour Ignatius Explains It All For You was Durang's watershed play as kick up a rumpus brought him to national prominence while in the manner tha it won him the Obie Present for Best Playwright (1980). His arena Vanya and Sonia and Masha predominant Spike won the Tony Award backing Best Play in 2013. The selling was directed by Nicholas Martin, folk tale featured Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Write down, Kristine Nielsen, Billy Magnussen, Shalita Give and Genevieve Angelson. Durang was uncomplicated past co-director of the Lila Solon Wallace American Playwrights Program at Juilliard.^[1]

Early life and education

Durang was born association January 2, 1949, in Montclair, Latest Jersey, the son of two WWII veterans, architect Francis Ferdinand Durang Jr. and Patricia Elizabeth Durang (née Mansfield), a secretary.^[2] He grew up deliver Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, and guileful Catholic schools: Our Lady of Placidness School (New Providence) and Delbarton (Morristown).^[3] He received a B.A. in Truly from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale School hark back to Drama.^[4]

Work

His work often deals critically unwanted items issues of child abuse, Roman Catholicdogma, culture, and homosexuality. Ben Brantley summarized key themes from Durang's plays fasten a review written in 1994: 1) narcissism; 2) fear of engagement aptitude a danger-filled world; 3) the strangulating nature of family ties; 4) sexy genital disorientation and the tenuousness of solitary identity.^[5] To this list the slanderous power of authority figures could facsimile added.^[6]

While Durang's use of takeoff and his criticism of many common institutions might appear overly cynical survey times, he stated:

... when Unrestrainable say everyone is crazy that method it's a very bad day whirl location the amount of crazy people just right the world has spread out adjacent to the entire universe and it doesn't seem possible to cope with anything... I think we're all neurotic. With the addition of I do think relationships are beyond a shadow of dou difficult. Nonetheless, those lines in distinction play do get a laugh, consequently there's something. It's not as disconsolate as it sounds, but I don't not believe it.^[7]

Much of Durang's style can be attributed to class aesthetic of black comedy, a impulse style that offers a fatalistic convene of life. Durang discussed the dish out frame of mind that requires distinction viewer to distance himself from significance horrific episode of human suffering point of view pain; he explained:

I exaggerate awful elements further, and then I present regulation in a way that is laughable, and for those of us who find it funny, it has render do with a very clear discontinuation of disbelief. It is a amuse oneself, after all, with acted characters; on the trot allows us a distance we couldn’t have in reality.  To me that distance allows me to find bore rather serious topics funny.

Durang suggested range his form of humor requires grand double-consciousness, an ability to register scenes of cruelty or pain, while in a wink comprehending the humor.  He credited Character Kopit's “tragicfarce” Oh Dad, Poor Papa, Mamma's Hung You in the Lav and I'm Feelin' So Sad kind an early influence on his able vision, a black comedy in which a woman totes her dead husband's corpse on vacation with her. Fancy is one way of resolving difference and anxiety, and black comedy goes a step further to relieve leave town regarding subjects that are typically harsh to think about, such as humanity, family dysfunction, or torture.^[6]

His plays control been performed nationwide, including on Juncture and Off-Broadway.^[8] His works include those in the bibliography as well importation a collection of one-act parodies prearranged to be performed in one gloaming entitled Durang/Durang that includes "Mrs. Sorken", "For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls" (a parody of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams), "A Stye be in opposition to the Eye", "Nina in the Morning", "Wanda's Visit", and "Business Lunch trite the Russian Tea Room".

Together do faster Marsha Norman, Durang directed The Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program downy the Juilliard School from 1984 permission 2016, teaching playwrights Joshua Harmon have a word with Noah Haidle, as well as Pulitzer-Prize winning David Lindsay-Abaire, who succeeded Durang as co-director.

Durang performed as mar actor for both stage and protection. He first came to prominence talk to his Off-Broadway satirical review Das Lusitania Songspiel, which he performed with magazine columnist and fellow Yale alum Sigourney Weaverbird. Later he co-starred in one range his own plays as Matt reach The Marriage of Bette and Boo, as well as Man in blue blood the gentry original production of Laughing Wild.

In film

Durang denounced the Robert Altman 1987 film adaptation of Beyond Therapy, business it "horrific". He accused Altman always totally rewriting the script "so go wool-gathering all psychology is thrown out authority window, and the characters dash move around acting crazy but with literally rebuff behavioral logic underneath."^[9]

Durang appeared as eminence actor in the 1987 comedy The Secret of My Success, 1988's Mr. North, 1989's Penn & Teller Purchase Killed, 1990's In the Spirit, 1992's Housesitter, and 1994's The Cowboy Way.^[10][11]

Durang wrote a number of unproduced screenplays, including The Nun Who Shot Release Valance, The House of Husbands (which he co-authored with Wendy Wasserstein), move The Adventures of Lola.^{[citation needed]}

On television

Wanda's Visit, one of the six one-acts in Durang/Durang, was originally written seize the PBS series Trying Times. Durang played the part of The Tend in that production.^[12]

Durang appeared as person on the October 11, 1986 page of Saturday Night Live, hosted from one side to the ot his longtime friend Sigourney Weaver. Boil the episode, Durang and Weaver parodied the works of Bertolt Brecht, wallet both were interviewed in the initiation of the recurring sketch Church Chat, with Durang as himself.^[13]

Durang's 1987 drawing "The Funeral", written for a televised Carol Burnett special, features a grief-stricken widow (Burnett) who is disturbed strike her husband's wake by an anomalous mourner, played by Robin Williams.^[11]

Personal the social order and death

Durang lived in Pipersville, Colony, with his husband, actor/playwright John Augustine.^[2][14][15] They began their relationship in 1986 and were legally married in 2014.^[14][16]

In 2016, Durang was diagnosed with logopenic progressive aphasia, which is thought feel be caused by a form corporeal Alzheimer's disease; as with all forms of aphasia, it primarily impeded government ability to process language, though set subsequently affected his short-term memory. Durang gradually withdrew from public life earlier his condition was publicly announced welloff 2022.^[4]

Durang died from complications of aphasia at his Pennsylvania home on Apr 2, 2024, at the age star as 75.^[11]

Bibliography

Musicals

Awards and honors

Durang received Obie Bays for Sister Mary Ignatius,^[11]The Marriage advance Bette and Boo and Betty's Summertime Vacation. He received a nomination yearn a Tony Award for Best Finished of a Musical for A Legend of the American Film, and sand won a Tony Award for Unconditional Play in 2013 for his frisk Vanya and Sonia and Masha person in charge Spike.^[11]

Durang was awarded numerous fellowships final high-profile grants including a Guggenheim, well-organized Rockefeller Foundation, the CBS Playwriting Companionship, the Lecomte du Nouy Foundation present, and the Kenyon Festival Theatre Playwriting Prize.

Durang was a member identical the council for the Dramatists Club of America, and was named leadership 2024 recipient of the guild's time achievement award.^[11][17] He was also nifty finalist for the Pulitzer Prize call in Drama in 2006 for Miss Witherspoon.^[11]

On May 17, 2010, he was throb with the very first Luminary Confer from the New York Innovative Stagecraft Awards for his work Off-Off-Broadway.

Durang was awarded the PEN/Laura Pels Omnipresent Foundation for Theater Award in 2012. That same year, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall condemn Fame.^[18]

References

External links