The Theatre of Christopher Durang

Miriam M. Chirico specializes in dramatic literature and comedy studies at Eastern Connecticut State University, where she is Professor of English. Together with Kelly Younger, she edited How to Teach a Play: Essential Exercises for Popular Plays, also by Methuen Drama. She is most recently the author of “Performed Authenticity: Narrating the Self in the Comic Monologues of David Sedaris, John Leguizamo and Spalding Gray,” (Studies in American Humor 2016), and has written articles for Text and Presentation, Comparative Drama, and Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies. This is her first book.

Acknowledgements
Preface: “Christopher Durang Explains It All For Me,” by David Lindsay-Abaire (Playwright, USA)

Introduction: Christopher Durang’s Dark Comedy
1 Perverting the Classics
The Idiots Karamazov
The Vietnamization of New Jersey
History of the American Film
Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge
Adrift in Macao

2 Seeking is Believing
The Nature and Purpose of the Universe
Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You
Laughing Wild
Sex and Longing
Miss Witherspoon

3 One-Act Plays
Durang/Durang

4 Family Dysfunction
Titanic
Death Comes to Us All, Mary Agnes
‘dentity Crisis
Baby with the Bathwater
The Marriage of Bette & Boo

5 American Anomie
Beyond Therapy
Media Amok
Betty’s Summer Vacation
Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

6 Conclusion
7 Critical Perspectives
We Laugh-Track People: Christopher Durang’s Drama of Audience Participation, Robert Combs (George Washington University, USA)

The Marriage of Parody and Satire: The All-American Comedy of Christopher Durang,
Jay Malarcher (West Virginia University, USA)


List of Contributors
Notes
Works Cited