A collection of dark comedies about terrible therapists, dysfunctional parents, and more, from a winner of a Tony Award for Best Play and three Obies.Known for his dark, absurd humor and social commentary, Christopher Durang explores the pain and confusion of everyday life—and makes audiences laugh uproariously at the results. Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, the center of a storm of controversy for its satire of misplaced trust in religious au...

A pair of plays from the comic genius who gave us the Tony Award-winning Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.Baby and the Bathwater follows its main character from infancy to adulthood, in a confusing search for identity after an unusual upbringing. In Laughing Wild, two comic monologues evolve into a man and a woman's shared nightmare of modern life and the isolation it creates. From her turf battles at the supermarket to the desperate cl...

From one of theater's most outrageous comic talents, two plays—one a Pulitzer Prize in Drama finalist, the other a twisted take on Christmas classics.In this book, Christopher Durang, the criminally funny author of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, presents two plays about death, religion, and a creamy Christmas pudding. In Miss Witherspoon—named one of the Ten Best Plays of 2005 by both Time and Newsday—Veronica, a re...

A painfully funny, Obie Award-winning play about the tragedy and comedy of family life.Never have marriage and the family been more scathingly or hilariously savaged than in this brilliant black comedy. The Marriage of Bette and Boo brings together two of the maddest families in creation in a portrait album of life's uncertainties and confusion. Bereaved by miscarriages, undermined by their families, separated by alcoholism, assaulted by disease, and mystif...

Pitch-black humor and brutal social commentary from the Tony Award-winning playwright: "Relentlessly fierce, relentlessly funny."—Ben Brantley, The New York TimesLooking for a little rest and time by herself, Betty rents a summer share at the beach. But Betty's luck turns when this sensible Everywoman gets drawn into the chaotic world of some very unsavory housemates: her friend Trudy, who talks too much; the lewd, semi-naked Buck, who tries to have sex wi...

Tony Award Winner, Best Play: "Hugely entertaining…deliciously madcap…offers some keen insights into the challenges and agonies of 21st-century life."— USA TodayNominated for six Tony Awards, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is one of the most lauded and beloved Broadway plays of recent years. Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up, but their peace is disturbed when their movie star...

"[A] hilarious and disturbing new comedy about all-American violence" and other whip-smart political satires by the Tony Award-winning playwright (Ben Branley, The New York Times).Christopher Durang, who The New York Observer called "Jonathan Swift's nicer, younger brother," became one of America's most beloved and acclaimed playwrights by marrying gonzo farce with incisive social critique. Now collected in Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People...

The Theatre of Christopher Durang considers the works of one of the foremost comedic writers for the American stage. From Durang's early success with the controversial Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1974) to his recent Tony Award-winning play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2012), he has been an original theatrical voice in American theatre. Edith Oliver, long-time theatre critic for The New Yorker, described Durang as “one of the fu...

This powerful anthology brings together reflective and raw plays by American playwrights surrounding the psychic and political boundaries of the many faces and shadows of terrorism.Allan Havis's introduction addresses a variety of terrorism cases from the last 25 years, examines several theories of the root causes of modern terrors, and underscores how theatre forms a unique contour to social and philosophical thought on terrorism.With a foreword from Robert Brustein, the a...