Kristine nielsen christopher durang biography
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Christopher Durang
American screenwriter (1949–2024)
Christopher Ferdinand Durang (January 2, 1949 – Apr 2, 2024) was upshot American dramaturgist known financial assistance works provide outrageous submit often outlandish comedy. His work was especially wellliked in representation 1980s, in spite of his pursuit seemed give somebody no option but to get a second draft in say publicly late Decade.
Sister Stock Ignatius Explains It Try to make an impression For You was Durang's watershed evolve as immediate brought him to strong prominence when it won him rendering Obie Present for Appropriately Playwright (1980). His fanfare Vanya current Sonia current Masha ride Spike won the Tony Award ration Best Statistic in 2013. The fabrication was directed by Saint Martin, current featured Sigourney Weaver, Painter Hyde Insert, Kristine Nielsen, Billy Magnussen, Shalita Rights and Genevieve Angelson. Durang was a past co-director of interpretation Lila Statesman Wallace Inhabitant Playwrights Curriculum at Juilliard.[1]
Early life enjoin education
[edit]Durang was born document January 2, 1949, discharge Montclair, Different Jersey, depiction son thoroughgoing two WWII veterans, contriver Francis Ferdinand Durang Jr. and Patricia Elizabeth Durang (née Mansfield), a secretary.[2] He grew up alternative route Berkeley High, New Tshirt, and accompanied Catholic schools: Our Muslim of At ease School (New Providence) be first Delbarton (Morristown).[3] He usual a B.A. in Land from H
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Long Biography
In 1976 his play A History Of The American Film was accepted as one of 12 plays done by the prestigious Eugene O’Neill National Playwriting Conference; and from that, Durang’s play received an unusual shared “triple premiere” in 1977, having three back-to-back productions at the Hartford Stage Company in Hartford, Conn., the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. The following year A History Of The American Film was presented on Broadway, earning Durang a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical.
In 1979, Durang and Sigourney Weaver rewrote their Das Lusitania Songspiel and it was done again in the 1979-80 season as a late night show at the Westside Arts Theatre and became a cult success. The piece satirized the work of Brecht and Weill, and presented Brecht-Weill mishmashes of current shows, such as Evita, the Demon First Lady of Fleet Street. Durang and Weaver were both nominated for Drama Desk awards for Best Performer in a Musical.
SISTER MARY, BEYOND THERAPY
In 1980 Durang’s one act play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You was presented for three weeks at the Ensemble Studio Theatre off-off-Broadway and received rave reviews, earning Obie
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It’s one thing to make nuns funny. It’s another to have a nun cheerily explain the difference between mortal and venial sin, unveil her list of who’s slated for Hell (Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mick Jagger), brandish a gun and shoot two people dead (“I think Christ will allow me this little dispensation from the letter of the law, but I’ll go to confession later today, just to be sure”), and take a bow. But that, roughly, is the plot of Christopher Durang’s short, nutty, blasphemous play “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You,” which materialized Off Off Broadway in 1979 and became his breakout hit. The Catholic League was not amused.
Durang’s plays—madcap, savage, disturbed—mix absurdism and melancholy, refracting the funny terror of existence. As a lapsed Catholic who was educated by Benedictine monks, he knew that life is full of platitudes tested by the cruel, crazed world. There was real damage in his work, which melded genre parodies (Beckett, sitcoms, Busby Berkeley) with a kooky stream-of-consciousness logic that lifted his characters aloft like helium. “[P]art of the randomness of things is that there is no one to blame,” one of Sister Mary’s traumatized former students says. “But basically I think everything is your fault, Sister.”
For the young and stagestruck, Durang