Christopher Durang was a Tony Award-winning, Pulitzer-finalist playwright known for “Miss Witherspoon” and “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”
- Died: April 2, 2024 (Who else died on April 2?)
- Details of death: Died in Pipersville, Pennsylvania of complications from aphasia at the age of 75.
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Christopher Durang’s legacy
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Durang built his name on funny, absurdist stage comedies that often confronted dark, difficult subjects. He earned a B.A. in English from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale School of Drama, then got his professional start writing for the stage with 1974’s “The Idiots Karamazov,” though he had been writing plays since he was a child. His breakthrough came five years later with “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You,” which won the Obie Award for Best Playwright and garnered him national attention.
Durang received further Obie Awards for “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” and “Betty’s Summer Vacation.” In 1978, he was nominated for a Tony for “A History of the American Film,” a wry play about the Golden Age of cinema, and in 2006 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for “Miss Witherspoon.” Perhaps his best-known work is 2012’s “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a dark comedy about a relationship between adult siblings. It earned six Tony Award nominations, winning for Best Play, along with a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, and others.
Durang taught at Yale and Princeton and was co-chair of The Juilliard School’s playwrights’ program. Other honors he received over the years include the Sidney Kingsley Playwriting Award, an award for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writers Award. In 2016, he was diagnosed with logopenic primary progressive aphasia, a rare form of Alzheimer’s.
On understanding humor:
“It’s really hard to explain how a joke works.”—Interview with Philadelphia City Paper, 2005
Tributes to Christopher Durang
Full obituary: The Washington Post
