Christopher Durang to Play Vanya

Broadway comedy king Christopher Durang, who visited us on March 10, will perform in a regional production of his 2013 Tony Award winning play.

From the New York Times:

The playwright Christopher Durang, who wrote “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” is set to star as Vanya in a coming production at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa., the producers announced. The comedy, which takes place in Bucks County and won a Tony last year for best play, is scheduled to run from July 17 to Aug. 10. Marilu Henner (“Taxi”) has been cast as Masha, a role played by Sigourney Weaver in the Off Broadway and Broadway productions. Vanya was originally played by David Hyde Pierce. The production is to be directed by Sheryl Kaller (“Mothers and Sons”).

More about Durang's Albany visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html

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Christopher Durang in the Times Union

Steve Barnes profiles playwright and humorist Christopher Durang in Sunday's Times Union. Durang visits the Writers Institute today!

Picture: Durang accepting his 2013 Tony for "Best Play" at the Tony Award ceremonies.

From the Times Union: 

The playwright Christopher Durang had an epiphany while making up new lyrics for a nursery rhyme in his 1983 play "Baby with the Bathwater."

"When I finished, I realized they were," he says, pausing, "nice I thought, 'Oh, that's oddly positive for me.'"

Durang, who's written comedies including "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You" (1979), "The Actor's Nightmare" and "Beyond Therapy" (both 1981), "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" (1985), "Laughing Wild" (1987) and "Betty's Summer Vacation" (1999), isn't known for nice. He's known for outrageous and absurd and biting, for sure, but nice? That surprised him.

More in the TU:  http://www.timesunion.com/entertainment/article/It-s-all-worked-out-quite-nicely-5294553.php#photo-5988188

More about Durang's visit today:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html

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Our Poet Laureate of the Absurd-- Christopher Durang

Christopher Durang, who visits us on Monday 3/10, is crowned "Poet Laureate of the Absurd" in a New York Observer review of his 2009 play, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.

"It’s very good news that Christopher Durang, our Poet Laureate of the Absurd, has written a smashing new play. Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater is a black farce that’s essentially about, well, torture, and a peculiar brand of American paranoia and bigotry—and I haven’t had such fun at the theater since the recent revival of Mr. Durang’s fable about his own dysfunctional childhood, The Marriage of Bette and Boo."

More in the Observer:  http://observer.com/2009/04/im-tickled-by-torture-durang-deals-serious-comedy/

More about Durang's visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html

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John Hodgman: I Don't Really Have an Attic

Shalom Auslander, who visits Thursday, March 1st, asks fellow humorist John Hodgman to hide him in the event of a second Holocaust in a book trailer for his new novel, Hope: A Tragedy.

Hodgman explains that he doesn't have an attic in his New York City apartment but that he does have three small storage units. Regarding the logistics, he wonders whether Auslander is fond of both his children. See the YouTube video.

Hodgman, who played the uncool PC in Apple's long-running "Get a Mac" advertising campaign, visited the Institute in 2005.

Picture: Hodgman and Justin Long in a "Get a Mac" ad.

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Comedy and Performance Art

Ken Johnson, who visited on November 7, interrogates the term "performance art" with regard to comedy in a piece that appeared last month in the New York Times.

"Comedy must at least be funny, and if it is not, it fails. Must comic performance art be funny? Can it be called art if it aims primarily for laughs? A lot of nonperformance art these days is humorous. Maurizio Cattelan’s work often is, and his retrospective at the Guggenheim, in which almost everything he’s done as an artist is suspended high above the rotunda floor, might be seen as a big joke." More.

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