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.

• AcknowledgementsPreface: “Christopher Durang Explains It All For Me,” by David Lindsay-Abaire (Playwright, USA)Introduction: Christopher Durang’s Dark Comedy1 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 Macao2 Seeking is BelievingThe Nature and Purpose of the Universe Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For YouLaughing WildSex and LongingMiss Witherspoon 3 One-Act PlaysDurang/Durang4 Family Dysfunction TitanicDeath Comes to Us All, Mary Agnes‘dentity CrisisBaby with the Bathwater The Marriage of Bette & Boo5 American Anomie Beyond Therapy Media Amok Betty’s Summer Vacation Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love ThemVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike6 Conclusion7 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 ContributorsNotesWorks Cited