Christopher Durang

This powerful anthology brings together reflective and raw plays by American playwrights surrounding the psychic and political boundaries of the many faces and shadows of terrorism. Allan Havis’s introduction addresses a variety of terrorism cases from the last 25 years, examines several theories of the root causes of modern terrors, and underscores how theatre forms a unique contour to social and philosophical thought on terrorism. With a foreword from Robert Brustein, the anthology features: Break of Noon by Neil LaBute 7/11 by Kia Corthron Omnium Gatherum by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros Columbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them by Christopher Durang

This powerful anthology brings together reflective and raw plays by American playwrights surrounding the psychic and political boundaries of the many faces and shadows of terrorism. Allan Havis’s introduction addresses a variety of terrorism cases from the last 25 years, examines several theories of the root causes of modern terrors, and underscores how theatre forms a unique contour to social and philosophical thought on terrorism. With a foreword from Robert Brustein, the anthology features:Break of Noon by Neil LaBute7/11 by Kia CorthronOmnium Gatherum by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-VassilarosColumbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen KaramWhy Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them by Christopher Durang

Winner of the 2013 Tony Award(R) for Best PlayWinner of the Outer Circle Critics Award for Best PlayWinner of the Drama League Award for Best Production of a PlayWinner of the Drama Desk Award for Best PlayWinner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best ProductionWinner of the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best PlayNominated for six Tony Awards(R), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is one of the most lauded and beloved Broadway plays of recent years. Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up, but their peace is disturbed when their movie star sister Masha returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike. A weekend of rivalry, regret, and raucousness begins!

Christopher Durang has been called "Jonathan Swift's nicer, younger brother" (The New York Observer). His plays are known for containing hilarity at every turn and revealing social commentary in every corner. Now collected in Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them and Other Political Plays are Durang's most revealing political and social satires. Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them tells the story of a young woman in crisis: Is her new husband, whom she married when drunk, a terrorist? Or just crazy? Or both? Is her father's hobby of butterfly collecting really a cover for his involvement in a shadow government? Does her mother go to the theater frequently to seek mental escape, or is she just insane? Add in a minister who directs porno, and a ladylike operative whose underwear just won't stay up, and this black comedy will make us laugh all the way to the waterboarding room. "[Durang's] funniest play in years. A play that equals his early hits." --John Simon, Bloomberg "Comedic napalm, something like a cross between The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Dr. Strangelove. Durang has now joined ranks with Dario Fo. Durang is getting a lot off his chest, and off ours. . . unnervingly true and cathartic." --Bob Verini, Variety

Comedy Christopher DurangChacrters: 4 male 2 female Interior Set (Set may be simply suggested.) Bruce and Prudence are deeply into therapy. Prudence's macho therapist is urging her to be more assertive while Bruce's wacky female therapist wants him to meet women by placing a personal ad. She does not fully comprehend that Bruce has a male lover who is not pleased by Bruce's desire to date a woman: Prudence. Bruce doesn't know how to handle poor nervous Prudenc

Full Length, Musical / 4m, 3f /Unit Sets Nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Music Set in 1952 in Macao, China, ADRIFT IN MACAO is a loving parody of film noir movies. Everyone that comes to Macao is waiting for something, and though none of them know exactly what that is, they hang around to find out. The characters include your film noir standards, like Laureena, the curvacious blonde, who luckily bumps into Rick Shaw, the cynical surf and turf casino owner her first night in town. She ends up getting a job singing in his night club - perhaps for no reason other than the fact that she looks great in a slinky dress. And don't forget about Mitch, the American who has just been framed for murder by the mysterious villain McGuffin. With songs and quips, puns and farcical shenanigans, this musical parody is bound to please audiences of all ages. "And there are of course those songs... Melnick demonstrates an affinity for melody and old-fashioned showmanship that link him to his grandfather, Richard Rodgers..."- Matthew Murray, Talkin' Broadway.com "...with a drop-dead funny book and shamefully silly lyrics by Christopher Durang and lethally catchy music by Peter Melnick. A Drift In Macao lovingly parodies the Hollywood film noir classics of the 1940's and 50's..." - Michael Dale, Broadwayworld.com

Sent back to Earth from the afterlife in order to cleanse her aura, Veronica, a cantakerous suicide, suddenly finds herself cast in the role of savior of all humankind in Miss Witherspoon, and in Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge, Mrs. Cratchit turns Dickens's holiday classic upside down, in a pair of entertaining plays. Original.

Few playwrights have explored as relentlessly as Christopher Durang the pain and confusion of everyday life--or made us laugh so uproariously at the results. Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, the center of a storm of controversy for its satire of misplaced trust in religious authority," remains as powerful today as when it was originally produced. The excruciatingly funny The Nature and Purpose of the Universe asks whether Eleanor Mann's Job-like suffering is really her fault, while Titanic takes us into the heart of children's anger with their parents and parents' manipula-tion of their children. In Beyond Therapy, two horrifyingly human therapists pursue their own needs at the expense of the most mismatched couple ever to meet through a personal ad. Also including 'Dentity Crisis and The Actor's Nightmare, this collection demonstrates that laughter is the best surgery, slicing through prejudice and hypocrisy, cutting out dead beliefs and inflamed opinions. These dark comedies, lit by lightning bolts of truth and humor, are among the most illuminating in American drama, by "one of the most explosively funny American dramatists" (Newsweek). Includes: The Nature and Purpose of the Universe 'Dentity Crisis Titanic The Actor's Nightmare Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You Beyond Therapy

"Laughing wild amid severest woe" perfectly describes the fiercely ironic comedy of Christopher Durang's Laughing Wild (which takes its title from this Thomas Gray quotation via Samuel Beckett) and the previously unpublished Baby with the Bathwater. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman's shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate cliches of self-affirmation he learns at his "per-sonality workshop," they run the gamut of everyday life's small brutalizations until they meet, with disastrous inevitability, at the Harmonic Convergence in Central Park.

Never have marriage and the family been more scathingly or hilariously savaged than in this brilliant black comedy. The marriage of Bette and Boo brings together two of the maddest families in creation in a portrait album of family life's uncertainties and confusion. Bereaved by miscarriages, undermined by their families, separated by alcoholism, assaulted by disease, and mystified by their priest, Bette and Boo, in their bewildered attempts to provide a semblance of hearth and home, are presented with a poignant compassion that enriches and enlarges the play, and places Christopher Durang squarely in the forefront of American dramatists.