Christopher Durang · aftercurtain

Shows & credits

Baby with the Bathwater

Writer · Play · 1983

Two parents who are completely unprepared for parenthood bring home their newborn baby. The two cannot seem to name the baby. John thinks the baby is a boy, but Helen says the doctors said they could decide later. When the baby cries, the two cannot quite decide what to do. To their rescue comes Nanny – who enters their apartment as if by magic, and is full of abrupt shifts of mood, first cooing at the baby soothingly, then screaming at it. In subsequent scenes, John and Nanny have an affair, Helen takes baby and leaves, only to come back a moment later rain-soaked and unhappy. By the time the baby is a toddler, Daisy has finally been named. At this age Daisy has a penchant for running in front of buses and for lying, depressed, in piles of laundry. The audience hears an alarming essay Daisy has written in school, and the principal, the terrifying Miss Willoughby, is oblivious to the essay’s cry for help, and instead gleefully awards it an "A" for style. Years later, Daisy enters dressed as a girl, but obviously a young man. The audience follows his years of therapy, where he alternates between feelings of depression and anger, and is unable to complete his freshman essay on Gulliver’s Travels despite having been in college for five years. In a scene reminiscent of the beginning of the play, Daisy (who has since chosen a new name) and his young bride fondly regard their own baby, determined not to repeat their parents' calamitous mistakes.

Betty's Summer Vacation

Playwright · Play · 1999

Betty seeks a peaceful beach-house vacation, but her housemates include a serial killer, a flasher, and other alarming guests. A mysterious laugh track turns the stay into a grotesque spectacle, culminating in a trial staged by the voices behind it.

Beyond Therapy

Writer · Play · 1981

This farcical comedy focuses on Prudence and Bruce, two Manhattanites who are seeking stable romantic relationships with the help of their psychiatrists, each of whom suggests their patient place a personal ad in the newspaper. Bruce is a highly emotional bisexual who tends to cry easily, a trait Prudence sees as a weakness. Their first meeting proves to be disastrous and the two report back to their respective therapists—libidinous Stuart, who once seduced Prudence, and eccentric Charlotte, who stumbles over the simplest of words, who references the play Equus as a good source of advice, and who interacts with her patients with the help of a stuffed Snoopy doll. Clearly the two therapists are more troubled than their patients. Charlotte suggests a revised ad, which once again attracts Prudence, but this time Prudence and Bruce manage to get past their initial loathing and discover they actually like each other. Complications ensue when Bruce's jealous live-in lover Bob decides to assert himself and do everything possible to maintain his status quo.

Laughing Wild

Playwright · Play · 1987 est

A woman describes impulsively striking a stranger who blocks her in a supermarket while choosing tuna. The man, who proves to be her victim, delivers a positive-thinking speech that repeatedly collapses into negativity. The play moves between their two monologues and scenes together.

Miss Witherspoon

Playwright · Play · 2005

After suicide, Veronica finds herself in the Tibetan Buddhist bardo and wants only to die again. Her upbeat spirit guide Maryamma repeatedly sends her back to life to learn its value, while Veronica's pessimism earns her the name Miss Witherspoon among the other spirits.

Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You

Writer · Play · 1979

At a Christmas lecture, a nun named Sister Mary Ignatius explains to the audience the basic tenets of Catholicism. She is assisted by her favorite student, seven-year-old Thomas. From time to time, she asks him catechism questions and gives him a cookie for every right answer. Her speech is interrupted when four of her former students Gary Sullivan, Diane Symonds, Philomena Rostovich, and Aloysius Benheim enter dressed as Saint Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and two halves of a camel. The four remind Sister that she had asked them to come perform the pageant they had performed when they were students in her class. After the pageant, it becomes apparent that the four have strayed from Mary Ignatious's teaching: Diane has had two abortions (the first one from a rape at age 18); Philomena is an unwed mother; Aloysius is an alcoholic who beats his wife and contemplates suicide; Gary is gay. They reveal that they were never asked to come in and merely wanted Mary Ignatius, because they each have a reason for hating her: Aloysius was refused bathroom privileges frequently and now has bladder problems; Philomena was hit for being a poor student; Gary is there on behalf of his boyfriend Jeff; and Diane had believed Mary Ignatius's teachings until her mother died of breast cancer and she was raped the same day. Diane reveals that she has brought a gun to kill Sister, something the other three were not aware of. Sister grabs a gun from behind her lectern and shoots Diane in self-defense. She also shoots Gary, proclaiming that she has sent him to heaven, as he'd been to confession earlier that day. She then points the gun at Aloysius, who needs to go to the bathroom, before handing it to Thomas so she can take a nap. The play ends with Thomas pointing the gun at Aloysius while explaining the perfections of God, Diane and Gary's dead bodies on the floor, and Sister asleep.

The Actor's Nightmare

Playwright · Play · 1981

An accountant finds himself backstage and is mistaken for an actor’s understudy. Forced into scenes from several plays he has never rehearsed, he cannot recall lines or even his identity and tries to navigate a performance that culminates in an execution scene.

The Nature and Purpose of the Universe

Playwright · Play · 1975

Two agents of God use a suburban New Jersey family to explain the universe’s nature and purpose. Eleanor, an unhappy housewife mistreated by her family and others, endures escalating trials that test the religious doctrine that she should accept her suffering.

The Vietnamization of New Jersey

Playwright · Play · 1977

A parody of Vietnam-era war drama and 1950s family television, set in a middle-class New Jersey home. A blind, traumatized son returns from Vietnam with a wife whose identity is concealed, and the family's responses expose violence, racial injustice and political hypocrisy.

Titanic

Playwright · Play · 1973 est

An outrageous one-act comedy aboard the Titanic follows the Tammurai family and shipboard figures through shifting identities, sexual entanglements, apparent disasters, and reversals of who is controlling events.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Writer · Play · 2012

Middle-aged siblings Vanya and Sonia live in the family home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Named after Chekhov's characters by their theater-enthusiast professor parents, Vanya and Sonia have not had to grow up. After spending their adulthood looking after their now-dead parents, neither has a job, and money is provided by their movie star sister Masha, who owns the house and pays the bills. Vanya (who is gay) and Sonia (who is forever reminding everyone that she was adopted) spend their days reflecting on their lost chances, debating whether the grove of nine cherry trees on their property constitutes an orchard, and bemoaning their rather Chekhovian lot in life. The only other resident of the house is their cleaning woman Cassandra, who, like her namesake, is prone to making dire prophecies that no one believes. This static environment is disrupted when Masha returns home, bringing with her a flurry of drama, an endless litany of insecurity, and a much younger, gorgeous, dimwitted lover named Spike. Sonia's resentments and Masha's competitive nature begin to spark arguments, and while Vanya tries to keep the peace, he is repeatedly distracted by the preening Spike, who takes every opportunity possible to strip down and show off his muscular body. Masha's fifth marriage has recently ended and her career is starting to stall. Spike's career has never started, and his biggest claim to fame is nearly landing a part in the sequel to Entourage, Entourage 2. Another interloper arrives, the neighbor's pretty niece Nina, an aspiring actress who provokes envy in Masha, lust in Spike, and sympathy in Vanya. Masha has returned home to attend a costume party at an influential neighbor's house and insists that her friends and family dress as characters from Disney's animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, choosing to dress as Snow White. When told she will be going as one of the dwarfs, Sonia rebels and dresses up as the Evil Queen, imagining her as portrayed by Maggie Smith on her way to the Oscars. As they prepare for the party, Masha tells them she intends to sell the house, leaving Vanya and Sonia devastated. Things come to a head the day after the party. As Cassandra uses a voodoo doll on Masha, trying to dissuade thoughts of selling the house, Sonia receives a phone call from a man she met at the party, requesting a date. Hesitantly, she accepts. Vanya, who is secretly writing a play inspired by Konstantin's imagined symbolist drama in The Seagull, is convinced by Nina to let her read it in front of the others. During the reading (which stars Nina as a molecule and takes place after the destruction of the earth), Spike rudely answers a text on his phone, and dismisses Vanya's suggestion of a handwritten response. Vanya reacts by launching into an impassioned rant, criticizing America's cultural regression in communication and media, while fondly and wistfully recalling the surroundings and memories of his childhood. Concluding that the intent of such progress seems to make people like him feel lost and forgotten, he retreats into the kitchen in tears. Masha realizes that the person Spike is texting is her personal assistant, with whom he has been having an affair. She ends her relationship with him and kicks him out of the house, announcing she no longer intends to sell it. As the play ends, the three siblings, optimistic for the first time in a very long time, sit quietly together and listen to The Beatles' song "Here Comes the Sun".

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