Conversation with America's Greatest Playwright

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/16/11 at 11:21pm

Chris Durang speaks!

For a little over an hour.

And he's funny.

And endearing.
From the Dramatist's Guild Conference

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 2:58pm

Dying to know what Durang is working on now and where his next play will be performed.

The Public again?

Anyone have a clue?

[Bettyboy72]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 3:02pm

I think David Lindsay Abaire is America's Greatest Modern Playwright.

[Calvin]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 3:40pm

You mean it's not Mamet?

I kid, I kid.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 4:49pm

Yes, Calvin, I'm only happy dealing with "Mamet" when someone looks at the word and pronounces the "et" like Monet with a questioning look like who or wtf is that.

It's beyond therapy.

But any word on Durang's next send-up? C'mon, Chris, grab a wacky handle and give us a hint, a whisper, a hope...

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 5:46pm

Seeing as how most of his material hasn't lasted a month on Broadway, perhaps "America's Greatest Playwright" is a bit of a leap.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 5:58pm

That, Goth, is what they would have said about Vincent Van Gogh, whose art was not appreciated when he made it.

Our Durang is a true genius, and his takes on our society are priceless.

[After Eight]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 6:13pm

Isn't Edward Albee still around?

Christopher Durang? Yipes!

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 6:17pm

Durang is our modern day Aristophanes! And more!

Oh, please, Albee--yuck. Like all three tall related women want to do is sit around talking about b-jobs. He's sicko.

[jpbran]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 6:18pm

My mind leapt to several others, none of which were Durang.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 6:20pm

Leap further.

[The Josh]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 10:57pm

Is it too late to make a Taymor joke?

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/18/11 at 11:35pm

Hahahahaha!

(laugh track provided courtesy of drop-ins from Betty's Summer Vacation house) Updated On: 7/18/11 at 11:35 PM

[A Director]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 1:37am

Betty's Summer Vacation is 12 years old. What play has Durang written in the last two years? There are living American playwrights who have written more and better plays the last two years.

Durang wouldn't make my top ten list of living American playwrights. He's still writing the same type of plays he wrote while a student at Yale.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 12:33pm

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some of Durang's plays. I love The Actor's Nightmare. But I don't think he's on the same level as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neil, Neil Simon, Thorton Wilder, William Inge, Clifford Odets, August Wilson, Alfred Uhry, and so many others.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 12:52pm

I'm sure Durang would agree.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 1:23pm

Stick out your hand, A Director, I have my ruler ready. Let me explain it all for you.

First off, you wouldn't know what Christopher Ferdinand Durang has actually written in the past two years in terms of plays as it generally takes a while to get them produced, so what you ask makes no sense--but it's not good enough to be considered nonsense.

If what you intended to say was "What new plays has he had produced in the past two years?" well who gives a damn. Yes, Torture was April 2009 so it's just outside two years. As he states in that wonderful interview which I question whether you took the time to listen to, that he has been mainly an "inspiration only" writer. In other words, he is not a hack who just cranks out crap, for which I am very grateful. I further read that he had a dark period way back which lasted about ten years where he was unable to write much. If you know theatre, you'd have to agree that satirists are under-appreciated, yet what they write is considered the highest form of humor. "Satire closed on Saturday night" and all that.

He has, despite the ten year fallow period and periods of psychological depression, produced a large, wonderful and varied body of work. He is certainly not writing the same type of plays as his early works. The recent revival of The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Roundabout 2008, with a delightful turn by Vickki Clark), a send-up of his own family and his Sister Mary, a send-up of his Catholic education are fun plays skewering the absurdities of thought he faced in each situation.

The early plays have enduring charm yet they pale in comparison to his later works which turn outwards toward society and events with the same deep thinker intelligence, sending up culture and perceptions of life, even the afterlife. With Miss Witherspoon (Pulitzer Prize finalist 2006) and Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them at Playwrights Horizons (2005) and The Public Theatre (2009) he's gone global in his send-ups, the incroyable Kristine Nielson being the champion interpreter of his work onstage. I feel so lucky to have attended these productions. Wither thy plays goeth, Durang, there goeth I.

And now, A Director, I would have to think with such a silly proposition that you have just made that you could be CFD himself, fishing for compliments--haha!

[newintown]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 1:25pm

I have loved Durang for what he is best - a miniaturist (like Dorothy Parker). But the boy certainly puts his foot down wrong sometimes - Sex and Longing, for example, is alternately cute, boring, repugnant, modestly amusing, and pointless. He may be better than Paul Rudnick (whose talent went south from the beginning), but he's no "greater" than Harry Kondoleon or Nicky Silver. And certainly not as good as Tony Kushner, David Henry Hwang, or Craig Lucas.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 1:44pm

Goth, do you really rank Simon alongside the likes of O'Neill, Miller, Wilson, Williams, et cetera? That's not to imply that I'd see him alongside Durang, either, but I've always considered him falling somewhere in the middle... somewhere alongside, say, Kaufman -- a supreme structuralist, but favoring the light, sitcom-y throwaway more than plumbing the corners of the psyche.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 1:50pm

Eugene O'Neill used to be my favorite American playwright. I've always admired Durang and loved his work but recently I realized with his latest contribution of plays that I love and value his work more highly than even O'Neill's. Interesting that they are both Irish, both sensitive souls.

August Wilson wrote a great play in Joe Turner's Come and Gone and some other fine plays but his work is generally very overwritten and tires me and usually dreadfully slow and boring in production, Bart Sher's recent direction excepted in Joe Turner.

Durang is shy and I don't think he'd ever champion his own work, seems out of character for him. His mother was the one who told his schools about his plays, remember!

Goth, you mention some fine playwrights (and some duds-haha). What I see in Durang is a quicker, faster delivery of associations, posings of ideas and cultural premises, skewering send-ups in absurdist delight and I don't see any other American playwright coming near to matching the vibrancy and bubbling thought in his work.

I do like the pathos of a great tragedy or a play that can build a chilling tension of suspense and either is hard to create. If I have a choice of seeing one of those or seeing the new Durang they would get left in the dust, seen "eventually." Durang writes a music a mind can dance to! Updated On: 7/19/11 at 01:50 PM

[Gothampc]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 2:27pm

"Goth, do you really rank Simon alongside the likes of O'Neill, Miller, Wilson, Williams, et cetera?"

I think he needs to be there to represent a specific American comic genre. His plays don't have the intricate characterizations of Williams, Miller or O'Neill, his dialogue is set-up/punchline then repeat, but there's no denying that he has been very successful with portraying the human condition. "Barefoot in the Park" "The Odd Couple" the Suite trilogy, the Brighton Beach trilogy, Lost in Yonkers, all have a depth in their subject matter that equals the other playwrights.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 2:40pm

Simon is more "hack" to me than playwright.

Other opinions are, of course, welcome.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 2:46pm

Okay, cool. I agree that he pokes at the tragic undersides of seeming sunniness and that we can find a lot of ourselves in many of his characters... but I suppose where we diverge is how well this equals or doesn't equal the laying bare of those undersides that some other playwrights lunge for. That may have a lot more to do with what a person values in his or her art, though, which is a much, much huger topic.