ABOUT CHRISTOPHER DURANG

ABOUT CHRISTOPHER DURANG
Christopher Durang (Playwright) has had plays on and off-Broadway including A History of the
American Film (Tony nom.), Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (Obie Award), Beyond
Therapy, Baby with the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award, Dramatists Guild Hull
Warriner Award), Laughing Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation (Obie Award), Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild
Christmas Binge, Miss Witherspoon (2005 Pulitzer finalist), and Adrift in Macao (book/lyrics Durang,
music by Peter Melnick). His latest play Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them
premiered at the Public Theater in 2009. In recent years, Durang won the Harvard Arts Medal; the Sidney
Kingsley Playwriting Award, and was the 2008 honoree at the William Inge Festival. Durang has acted in
movies (Butcher’s Wife, Housesitter, Mr. North, Secret of My Success)and in his own plays. He’s a
member of the Dramatists Guild Council.
ABOUT NICHOLAS MARTIN
Nicholas Martin (Director) McCarter: She Stoops to Conquer. Broadway: Present Laughter, Butley,
Match, Hedda Gabler, The Rehearsal, You Never Can Tell. Off-Broadway: Why Torture Is Wrong, and
the People Who Love Them (The Public); Observe the Sons of Ulster… (Drama Desk nom.); The Time of
the Cuckoo; Chaucer in Rome; Saturn Returns; The New Century (Lincoln Center); Fully Committed
(Vineyard Theatre, Cherry Lane); Full Gallop (MTC, West Side Arts); Betty’s Summer Vacation (Obie
Award, Drama Desk noms), Sophistry (Playwrights Horizons); Bosoms and Neglect (Signature Theatre).
Regional: The House of Blue Leaves (Mark Taper Forum); Dead End (Ahmanson Theatre); Macbeth (Old
Globe); The Verizon Play (Actors Theatre of Louisville); The Circle, A Cheever Evening (Westport
Country Playhouse); and My Wonderful Day (Two River Theater). Mr. Martin is the former artistic
director of Williamstown Theatre Festival and of Boston’s Huntington Theatre.
CAST AND CREATIVE
Genevieve Angelson (Nina) is
so happy to be making her
McCarter Theatre debut. She
received her MFA from the
NYU Graduate Acting program
in May. NYU: Across the
Water, Camino Real, Clifford
Odets: You're It, Clybourne
Park, Cymbeline, Festen,
Katzelmacher, Major Barbara,
Three Sisters, Trouble in Mind,
The Wild Duck. TV: Army
Wives
Shalita Grant (Cassandra) OffBroadway: The Philanderer
(Pearl Theatre); Measure for
Measure (The Public Theater);
The Winter’s Tale, The
Merchant of Venice (New York
Shakespeare Festival); Roxy
Font (New York Fringe
Festival). Regional: Luck of the
Irish (Huntington Theatre); The
Laramie Project (England);
Unaccompanied Minors
(Vanguard Arts); The
Children’s Hour (Everyman
Theatre); A Raisin in the Sun,
Into the Woods (Mainstage
Theater); Body and Soul
(Baryshnikov Arts Center).
Film/TV: The Good Wife,
Empire Corner, Invisible,
Rehearsing a Dream (Academy
Award nom., Best Documentary
Short, 2006). Affiliated with
NFAA Arts. Graduate of The
Juilliard School.
Billy Magnussen (Spike) is so
excited to be a part of Vanya
and Sonia and Masha and Spike
at McCarter Theatre. Billy made
his Broadway debut in The Ritz
and off-Broadway debut in
Paper Dolls. Film: Twelve,
Happy Tears, Damsels in
Distress, Tan Lines, Surviving
Family, The Brass Teapot, The
East, The Lost Valentine. TV:
Boardwalk Empire, In Plain
Sight, Law & Order, Law &
Order: CI, The Unusuals, NCIS
LA, CSI, and As the World
Turns. Billy is a proud graduate
of the University of North
Carolina School of the Arts and
member of the rock band
Reserved for Rondee.
Kristine Nielsen (Sonia)
Broadway: Bloody Bloody
Andrew Jackson, To Be Or Not
To Be, Les Liaisons
Dangereuses, Spring
Awakening, A Streetcar Named
Desire, The Greenbird, Jackie,
The Iceman Cometh. OffBroadway: Why Torture Is
Wrong, and the People Who
Love Them (Drama League,
Outer Critics Circle noms);
Crazy Mary; Our Leading Lady;
Miss Witherspoon; Betty’s
Summer Vacation (Obie, Drama
Desk, and Outer Critics Circle
noms); Dog Opera (Obie
Award). Regional: Old Globe,
Williamstown Theatre Festival,
Guthrie, Huntington Theatre,
Bay Street Theatre, McCarter
Theatre, Alley Theatre,
Edinburgh International
Festival, La Jolla Playhouse,
among others. Films: Morning
Glory, That’s What She Said,
The Savages, Adelaide, Small
Time Crooks. TV: Political
Animals, Smash, Law & Order,
Law & Order: CI, Third Watch.
MFA from the Yale School of
Drama. BS from Northwestern.
David Hyde Pierce (Vanya)
Broadway: Christopher
Durang’s Beyond Therapy, La
Bȇte, Accent on Youth, Curtains
(Tony Award), Spamalot, The
Heidi Chronicles. OffBroadway: The Landing, Close
Up Space, Elliott Loves, Zero
Positive, That’s It Folks!, The
Maderati, The Author’s Voice,
Summer, Hamlet, Much Ado
About Nothing,Peter Brook’s
The Cherry Orchard.Regional:
The Guthrie, Goodman, Long
Wharf, Ahmanson, and Geffen
Theaters. Film: The Perfect
Host, Down With Love, Full
Frontal, Wet Hot American
Summer, A Bug’s Life, Treasure
Planet, Wolf, Nixon, Sleepless in
Seattle, Little Man Tate,
Crossing Delancey. TV: The
Powers That Be, The Outer
Limits, Titus, Frasier (SAG and
Emmy Awards).
Sigourney Weaver (Masha) is
delighted to be making her
McCarter Theatre debut. Her
Durangian career includes:
Better Dead Than Sorry (Yale
Cabaret, 1973), The Marriage of
Bette and Boo (Yale School of
Drama, 1974), The Nature and
Purpose of the Universe (The
Direct Theatre, NYC 1976),
Titanic (1977), Das Lusitania
Songspiel (co-authored and
performed with Christopher
Durang, 1977-1980, Drama
Desk nom.), Beyond Therapy
(Phoenix, 1982), Sex and
Longing (Lincoln Center, 1997).
Other theater: Mrs. Farnsworth
and Crazy Mary by A.R.
Gurney, Hurlyburly by David
Rabe, The Guys by Anne
Nelson, Gemini by Albert
Innaurato, Marco Polo Sings a
Solo by John Guare. Ms.
Weaver has also been
gallivanting around the world
making movies, including Alien,
Ghostbusters, Working Girl,
Gorillas in the Mist, Death and
the Maiden, Dave, Galaxy
Quest, Avatar, and the
upcoming Vamps, in which she
plays a vampire. She recently
appeared in Greg Berlanti’s
Political Animals on USA. She
is a proud patron, co-founder,
and actor at The Flea Theater in
lower Manhattan.
Christopher Durang (Playwright)
has had plays on and off-Broadway
including A History of the American
Film (Tony nom.), Sister Mary
Ignatius Explains It All For You
(Obie Award), Beyond Therapy,
Baby with the Bathwater, The
Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie
Award, Dramatists Guild Hull
Warriner Award), Laughing Wild,
Betty’s Summer Vacation (Obie
Award), Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild
Christmas Binge, Miss
Witherspoon (2005 Pulitzer
finalist), and Adrift in Macao
(book/lyrics Durang, music by
Peter Melnick). His latest play Why
Torture is Wrong, and the People
Who Love Them premiered at the
Public Theater in 2009. In recent
years, Durang won the Harvard
Arts Medal; the Sidney Kingsley
Playwriting Award, and was the
2008 honoree at the William Inge
Festival. Durang has acted in
movies (Butcher’s Wife,
Housesitter, Mr. North, Secret of
My Success)and in his own plays.
He’s a member of the Dramatists
Guild Council.
Nicholas Martin (Director)
McCarter: She Stoops to Conquer.
Broadway: Present Laughter,
Butley, Match, Hedda Gabler, The
Rehearsal, You Never Can Tell. OffBroadway: Why Torture Is Wrong,
and the People Who Love Them
(The Public); Observe the Sons of
Ulster… (Drama Desk nom.); The
Time of the Cuckoo; Chaucer in
Rome; Saturn Returns; The New
Century (Lincoln Center); Fully
Committed (Vineyard Theatre,
Cherry Lane); Full Gallop (MTC,
West Side Arts); Betty’s Summer
Vacation (Obie Award, Drama
Desk noms), Sophistry (Playwrights
Horizons); Bosoms and Neglect
(Signature Theatre). Regional: The
House of Blue Leaves (Mark Taper
Forum); Dead End (Ahmanson
Theatre); Macbeth (Old Globe);
The Verizon Play (Actors Theatre of
Louisville); The Circle, A Cheever
Evening (Westport Country
Playhouse); and My Wonderful
Day (Two River Theater). Mr.
Martin is the former artistic
director of Williamstown Theatre
Festival and of Boston’s
Huntington Theatre
David Korins (Set Design)
McCarter: She Stoops to Conquer,
Miss Witherspoon. Broadway:
Annie, Motown (both upcoming),
Bring It On, Magic/Bird, Godspell,
Chinglish, An Evening with Patti
Lupone & Mandy Patinkin, The
Pee-Wee Herman Show, Lombardi,
Passing Strange, Bridge & Tunnel.
He has designed shows for many
off-Broadway and regional
theaters as well as several
concerts for Kanye West. David
has received a Drama Desk, Lucille
Lortel, two Hewes Design Awards,
and the 2009 Obie Award For
Sustained Excellence in Design.
Emily Rebholz (Costume
Design) Broadway: Bloody
Justin Townsend (Lighting
Design) Broadway: Bloody
Mark Bennett (Original Music
and Sound Design) McCarter:
Bloody Andrew Jackson.
RecentNew York: Into the
Woods (The Public); Carrie
(MCC); Close Up Space
(MTC); Slowgirl, (Lincoln
Center); Lonely I’m Not,
Bachelorette (Second Stage);
The Shaggs (Playwrights
Horizon); Bloody Bloody
Andrew Jackson (The Public,
2010 Henry Hewes Design
Award nom.); This Wide Night
(Naked Angels, 2011 Lucille
Lortel nom.). Additional New
York designs have been seen at
The Public Theater, Lincoln
Center, Roundabout, The
Labyrinth Theater Company,
Rattlestick, Ars Nova, The
Atlantic Theater, and Working
Theater. Recent regional:
Sweeney Todd (Opera Theater
St. Louis), The Rocky Horror
Show (The Old Globe), Behind
The Eye (Cincinnati Playhouse
in the Park, 2011 Acclaim
Award), Prometheus Bound at
A.R.T. Education: MFA, Yale
School of Drama.
Bloody Andrew Jackson. NYC:
Galileo, Unnatural Acts
(Classic Stage Company); Milk
Like Sugar (Playwrights
Horizons); The Other Place
(Manhattan Class Company);
On The Levee (LCT3); Opus
(Primary Stages); Speech and
Debate (Roundabout); Eve
Ensler’s The Treatment (Culture
Project); Beauty on the Vine,
Palace of the End (Epic
Theatre). Regional: Arden,
Alliance, A.R.T, Bard
Summerscape, Boston Court,
Baltimore’s CenterStage,
Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland
Playhouse, Folger Shakespeare,
Hartford Stage, Huntington
Theatre, Kirk Douglas, The
Intiman, La Jolla Playhouse,
Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare
Festival, Playmakers Repertory
Company, Portland Center
Stage. He is an assistant
professor at Northeastern
University and has been
nominated for numerous awards
for his work such as Outer
Critics Circle, Lucille Lortelle,
Henry Hewes, Helen Hayes,
Elliot Norton, and Independent
Reviewers of New England.
Phaedra Backwards, An Illiad,
Candida. Broadway
(composition and/or sound
design): Driving Miss Daisy, A
Steady Rain, The Coast of
Utopia (2007 Drama Desk
Award), A Streetcar Named
Desire, Who’s Afraid of
Virginia Woolf?, Henry IV,
Golda’s Balcony, The Goat,
Lily Tomlin’s The Search…,
The Lion in Winter, A View
From the Bridge. BAM/Old
Vic: original scores for all
productions of the Bridge
Project 2009-2012 (Sam
Mendes, dir.). Off- Broadway:
An Iliad, Mad Forest (NYTW).
Scores for eight Shakespeare
productions at The Public, as
well as Why Torture Is
Wrong,The Seagull, and
Dogeaters. Regional: Dead End,
Rose Tattoo (Huntington); My
Wonderful Day, Much Ado
About Nothing (Two River
Theatre). Awards: Obie for An
Illiad, and Sustained Excellence
in Sound Design, 14 Drama
Desk noms.
Daniel Swee (Casting Director) As casting director for Lincoln Center Theater, he has cast more than 70
productions including War Horse, Other Desert Cities, The Coast of Utopia, In the Next Room, Joe
Turner’s Come and Gone, Awake and Sing!, Henry IV, The Invention of Love, Contact, A Delicate
Balance, The Heiress, Arcadia, Carousel,and The Sisters Rosensweig. Additional Broadway productions
include: God of Carnage, Mary Stuart, Exit the King, Frost/Nixon, Julius Caesar, The Crucible, Art and
The Heidi Chronicles. Films include: The Hours, The Crucible, The Object of My Affection,and Cold
Souls among others.
A CHAT WITH CHRISTOPHER
DURANG
A few days before rehearsals began, playwright Christopher Durang spoke with McCarter literary
director Carrie Hughes.
How did you come to write Vanya and
Sonia and Masha and Spike?
A few years ago I was at the place in my life
where a lot of Chekhov’s characters are,
where they’re looking back and asking “did I
take the right road?”, “oh, I didn’t do that and
I should have,” and “I didn’t go to Moscow,
should I have?” And, in the 1990s, I moved to
Bucks County. I live on a small hill in a stone
farmhouse. It looks at a pond, and it reminded
me of the various Chekhov plays, where there
are people who are living in the county and
their more glamorous [relatives] are off doing
things out in the world while the people who
are living at home feel like they haven’t had
lives.
Now, I like where I live and I’ve had an
active life in theater, but I thought to myself, “what if I had been like a Chekhov character and I just had
lived here all my life?” I thought of my actress friend Kristine Nielsen, and I thought, what if she was like
the Sonia character from Uncle Vanya and the two of us lived here and eventually had to take care of our
ailing parents for years and years. And what if we had a glamorous sister – a bit like Madame Arkadina -who was a glamorous actress, indeed a movie star. And she’s been paying for everything at the house, but
still we feel stuck here. I called the actress Masha because the characters in my play are mixes of some of
the Chekhov characters. And I thought of my friend Sigourney Weaver to play the glamorous actress.
And I thought of how jealous and left behind Vanya and Sonia would be. And then one day I started to
write a morning conversation between the two stay-at-home siblings.
You have known Kristine Nielson and Sigourney Weaver since graduate school, right?
Sigourney since graduate school. Kristine was a few years behind us but she was in Sigourney’s
husband’s class, and so Sigourney was friends with Kristine before I knew her. I got to know Kristine
when she and I were actors together, in a Lincoln Center production of Ubu Roi. It was famously panned
and truthfully it wasn’t a good production. Kristine had one big scene and it always worked and I was
very impressed with her. We became good friends backstage. …I’ve actually lost track a little bit how
many of my plays she’s been in. Betty’s Summer Vacation is the first one, then Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild
Christmas Binge, then Miss Witherspoon and Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. So
this will be the fifth play of mine, premiere that she’s been in.
And Sigourney was in my early plays at Yale School of Drama, and she automatically had the most
wonderful mix of comic sensibility with just the right amount of psychological truth underneath. The first
play of mine she did was called Better Dead Than Sorry, and she got to sing the title song while receiving
shock treatments. I played her worried brother, and we became friends during the production. It was quite
a hit at the Yale Cabaret. I was also in some plays NOT by me at Yale – my favorite was a children’s play
where Sigourney was the evil baroness, and I was her troll, who liked to be beaten. (It really was a
children’s show, but that was an odd detail.) And throughout my career I’ve been lucky that Sigourney
has often made herself available to be in my plays.
And can I tell you I do have a bit of a history with David Hyde Pierce [who plays Vanya]? When Beyond
Therapy was slated for Broadway, we auditioned a young Yale student named David Hyde Pierce for the
small but somewhat meaty role of the waiter. He was just out of college, and the director John Maddon
and I liked David so much we didn’t even see him for a callback, we just cast him with the one audition,
which is very rare. David was wonderful in the role and he was also really, really young. This was his
first professional acting job. And I stayed friends with him over the years. This is the first time he’s going
to be in a play of mine [since Beyond Therapy] but he’s been in readings of plays of mine. But I’ve
always been proud to say that we gave him his Equity card!
CH: Why did you choose to move to Bucks County?
CD: I grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, then I went to colleges in cities, Harvard and Yale, and then
New York City, because it felt and still feels like – to be a playwright, at least initially, you have to be in
New York City. And I love New York and the way you can just jump on the subway, on the spur of the
moment, and see a play or a musical. But after about ten or eleven years, I started to feel a little
overwhelmed by the city and the energy, especially the noise. And I also found myself missing trees.
My good friend, the actress E. Katherine Kerr, lived in Connecticut and she would invite me to her house
to spend the weekend. One summer, she announced that she’d found a house for me to rent. I started to
rent in Connecticut in the summer and then at one of my summer rentals the owners suddenly decided
they wanted to go away for the winter, and they asked me if I wanted to do it full time. So I did. Then, I
decided that I wanted to shift and have my main place in the country and have a smaller place in New
York. I got to Bucks County by chance – [my partner] John got an acting job in New Hope – and we
found this house and just sort of fell in love with it, and that’s how we ended up there.
CH: What was your first experience with Chekhov ?
CD: I loved reading plays when I was young. My mother’s family
valued writing and theater, so I was often told who the famous writers
were. Anton Chekhov was definitely a famous writer, even though I
don’t think my mother or my aunt, who’s also very literary, had actually
read him. I tried to read a Chekhov play and I have to admit I found it
very hard. I did finish it but I felt like I hadn’t understood it.
CH: And how old were you then?
CD: I was probably 11 or 12. Then, when I went to college, there was a
wonderful English professor and playwright, William Alfred. My
freshman year, he gave this class that was an overview of all theater. We
read The Seagull and when he read aloud from it, he was very good at playing the undercurrent. Once I
heard him read a scene, I really liked it. My junior year, Harvard put on a student production of Three
Sisters. It was the first time I saw that play, I had not read it yet, and I loved it. With those two things –
the reading of The Seagull and the student production of Three Sisters – there was something about the
melancholy that I was drawn to.
Chekhov says his plays are comedies, which I can understand, sometimes. I have seen productions where
there are really funny things, because the characters are so stuck in their psychology and so unaware, and
sometimes that really is very funny. I must say though, ultimately speaking, they tend to end tragically.
One does feel sad for them.
So, for whatever reason, all of my life those two plays – Seagull and Three Sisters – I feel I’ve seen each
of them about twenty times. I’ve only seen Uncle Vanya a couple of times. When I started this play, I had
never seen or read Cherry Orchard, so I read it and saw two BBC versions of it and then I saw the version
that Classic Stage Company did recently with Dianne Wiest and John Turturro, which I very much liked.
CH: And would you say that Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a Chekhovian play?
CD: I hesitate to say it’s a Chekhovian play because I’m afraid I connect melancholy with the word
Chekhovian. What I’ve been saying instead is that it’s definitely not a parody. …Also, I believe that
people can enjoy it without knowing Chekhov, but there’ll be some references that will be more
meaningful if they know his work.
I think I started with Chekhov’s themes of regret and looking back and feeling resentful. And from that, a
strange thing happened when I was writing it. In Uncle Vanya, Vanya and Sonia are both very unhappy.
Vanya in particular is quite bitter. So when I was writing it, I thought that these two people living together
in this Bucks County farmhouse were going to be really, really bitter. But I found in writing it that Sonia
was very bitter, and unhappy to such a degree that Vanya became much more – he wasn’t exactly
delighted about his life, but he wasn’t as tortured as she was. When Masha and Sonia met, I found that
Vanya started to be the diplomat between them, as opposed to stirring the pot. I was kind of the diplomat
in my extended family. I either stayed out of it or I tried to calm things down. So I ended up writing part
of me into Vanya.
CH: And my last question is a thing I always ask at the end of interviews-- is there anything you’d
like the audience to know before they see your play?
CD: Well, I’ll just repeat-- I want them to know it’s not a parody; it’s not about making fun of Chekhov.
It’s an actual play that is meant to reflect themes and characters of Chekhov. They’re quite universal, the
ones that I mentioned like regret, looking back, wondering if you took the right path and feeling upset
about some of your choices. And it’s funny, I actually feel that I’ve had a lucky life, but some days there
will be something I recall from the past and I’ll suddenly feel very bitter about it. And the next day, or
sometimes even the next hour, I talk myself out of my funk because I realize – I’ve had my plays
produced so much, I make a living mostly as a writer, I like my teaching. So I feel very fortunate. But my
version of Vanya has had less luck than me. Though my Vanya and I share the same worries for the
future, and the same longings for what was nicer in the past.
DURANG INTERVIEWS DURANG
Christopher Durang is the author of many plays, including Beyond Therapy; Sister Mary
Ignatius Explains It All For You; The Marriage of Bette and Boo; Laughing Wild; Betty’s
Summer Vacation; and Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. His play Miss
Witherspoon premiered at McCarter in 2005. A few weeks before rehearsals began for Vanya
and Sonia and Masha and Spike he spoke with…himself.
Chris: Hello again. I don’t know if you recall, but I interviewed you in 2005 when
McCarter presented your play Miss Witherspoon.
Durang: Oh yes. You’re my inner child or something?
Chris: No, I’m just your first name. And you’re your last name. But you do most of the
writing. I eat bonbons and stay in bed most of the time.
Durang: Oh yes right. I’m always throwing out candy boxes all the time. Gosh, you should be
fatter if you eat chocolates all the time.
Chris: You’re the one who looks fatter. I look fine.
Durang: Well, I eat cupcakes a lot. I’m sorry, can we move ahead with the interview?
Chris: Sure. Tell me about your new play.
Durang: Well, it’s called Vanya and Soniaand Masha and Spike. It takes Chekhov themes and
characters and mixes them all up, as if I’ve put them into a comic blender.
Chris: What’s a “comic” blender?
Durang: It’s a blender that is funny. As opposed to a tragic blender.
Chris: And is this play a parody of Chekhov?
Durang: No, it is not. I have written parodies, but this is not one. It is a “regular” play that is set
in the present time, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. And Vanya and Masha are brother and
sister, and Sonia is their adopted sister. And they had professor parents who named them after
Chekhov characters. But they are not in pre-revolutionary Russia, and they don’t have samovars,
and they don’t pay for things with rubles. On the other hand, they are filled with regret and
bitterness and are busy wondering if they made the right choices in life. Vanya and Sonia, in
particular, feel they have missed having a life, and they are resentful of their sister Masha who is
a movie star. And Spike is Masha’s new, not-terribly-age-appropriate boyfriend.
Chris: I’m sorry, I wandered into the kitchen to get a ginger ale. Could you say that all
again?
Durang: No, I couldn’t. But the tape recorder was on, you can transcribe it later on.
Chris: Oh Lord. Transcribing things. Very difficult. But how I love ginger ale.
Durang: Me too! And to answer your question, I am not an alcoholic, but I do love ginger ale.
Chris: I’m sorry. What about alcoholic?
Durang: Nothing. I just like to say that I am not one. It’s unusual.
Chris: Uh huh. So this play, which is a parody, pokes fun at the work of Tennessee
Williams, right?
Durang: IT IS NOT A PARODY. Is something wrong with your short term memory?
Chris: There certainly is. And with yours. I remember you said something to me this
morning, and I can’t for the life of me remember what you said.
Durang: When I read Chekhov in college, I really loved it…but I was in my early 20s, and when
I read about the middle aged and older characters feeling gloomy with their life choices, I felt
empathy—but I was very young, I had all my hopes and plans ahead of me.
Chris: Keep talking. I have to answer this text.
Durang: And now that I am a lot older, suddenly I totally understand those characters who are
looking back, and thinking, oh that was a mistake. Or oh that was a missed opportunity. Or
they’re looking ahead and saying, oh Lord the future looks bleak. Especially since the weather is
now terrifying. Gosh those people who deny global warming exists…well, it’s hard sharing a
planet with people who think science is bunk, and oil is fine, and I guess we’re stuck with
nothing being done until the earth becomes uninhabitable. With the extreme heat, I envision
people needing to walk around in plastic, air-conditioned bubbles. For real.
Chris: I am texting my massage person. Please don’t talk for a little while, I am
having trouble with my autocorrect. I told him I couldn’t see him for a massage, and
autocorrect changed it to I wanted to sue him for a sausage. And now he’s upset.
Durang: Yes, to answer your question, my characters live in the present and they use telephones
and texting and Google. So it is in the present.
Chris: Why does autocorrect think sausage is a sensible word but not massage?
Durang: I don’t know. Nothing in the world makes sense. I want to end this interview. You’re
not listening to me.
Chris: Yes, I am. Your play is a parody, you admit you’re an alcoholic, and you are bitter
and you want to live in an air-conditioned bubble.
Durang: Uh huh. You know the dramaturg did an interview with me. I’m going to ask her to
print some of that. And you should go back to bed and eat your chocolates.
Chris: I love to stay in bed all day. That’s the problem with today. I got up.
ABOUT ANTON CHEKHOV
Adapted from an article by Laurie Sales in McCarter’s 2003 Uncle Vanya study guide.
Born on January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia, on the Sea of Azov, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov would
eventually become one of Russia's most cherished storytellers. The son of a grocer and the grandson of a
serf, young Chekhov began working at an early age in his father's grocery store. When his father fled
Taganrog in 1876 to escape his creditors, 16-year-old Chekhov was left to care for his home and family,
which included his mother and three younger siblings. Chekhov's own family home and shop were
auctioned off.
In 1879, Chekhov enrolled as a medical student at the University of Moscow. During his years in school
he wrote humorous stories and sketches under a pen name to help support his family. After graduating in
1884 with a degree in medicine, he began to freelance as a journalist and writer of comic sketches. Early
in his career, he mastered the form of the one-act and produced several masterpieces of this genre
including The Bear (1888), in which a creditor hounds a young widow but becomes so impressed when
she agrees to fight a duel with him that he proposes marriage, and The Wedding (1889), in which a
bridegroom's plans to have a general attend his wedding ceremony backfire when the general turns out to
be a retired naval captain "of the second rank."
His first full-length play, Ivanov, an immature work when compared to his later plays, was produced in
1887 in Moscow, with not much success, although a subsequent production in St. Petersberg in 1889 was
popular and praised. His next play, The Wood Demon (1889), had trouble finding a producer and was
critically panned. Through the success of his stories and articles, by 1892 he was able to fulfill his lifelong
dream of buying an estate at Melikhovo, near Moscow. There he entertained himself with gardening,
planting entire forests and a cherry orchard of his own. It was during his stay in Melikhovo in 1895 that
Chekhov wrote The Seagull. Its first performance at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1896
was so badly received that Chekhov actually left the auditorium during the second act and vowed never to
write for the theater again. But in the hands of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898, The Seagull was
transformed into a critical success.
It was also at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 that Chekhov saw the actress Olga Knipper and soon after
wrote to a friend, "Were I to stay in Moscow, I would fall in love with her." By 1901, Chekhov and
Knipper were married.
In 1899, Chekhov gave the Moscow Art Theatre a revised version of The Wood Demon, now titled Uncle
Vanya
(1899). Along with The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904), it cemented Chekhov’s
important place in the history of modern theatre. However, although the Moscow Art Theatre productions
brought Chekhov great fame, he was never quite happy with the style that director Konstantin
Stanislavsky imposed on the plays. While Chekhov insisted that most of his plays were comedies,
Stanislavsky's productions tended to emphasize their tragic elements. In spite of their stylistic
disagreements, it was not an unhappy marriage, and these productions brought widespread acclaim to
both Chekhov's work and the Moscow Art Theatre itself.
Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of comic satire, pointing out the unhappy nature of
existence in turn-of-the-century Russia. Perhaps Chekhov's style was described best by the writer himself:
"All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your
lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most
certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be
quite different, quite unlike our present life."
During Chekhov's final years, he was forced to live in exile from the intellectuals of Moscow. In March
of 1897, he suffered a lung hemorrhage, and although he still made occasional trips to Moscow to
participate in the productions of his plays, he was forced to spend most of his time in the Crimea for the
sake of his health. He died of tuberculosis on July 14, 1904, at the age of forty-four, and was buried in
Moscow.
NAUGHTY AND NICE: THE DURANG
EFFECT
BY JANICE PARAN (EXCERPTED FROM MCCARTER’S AUDIENCE GUIDE TO MISS WITHERSPOON, 2005)
“Manic,” “wicked,” “ferociously funny,” “deliriously assaultive,” and “ecstatically angry” are just a few
of the words that have been used to describe Christopher Durang and his work in the thirty-plus years
since the playwright (and sometime actor) first carved a niche for himself as a smart-aleck and gleefully
satiric dramatist whose crackpot creations, simultaneously silly and stinging, would make him one of the
American theater’s most original, influential, and therapeutic comic voices.
A New Jersey native who spent his undergraduate years at Harvard, Durang attended the Yale School of
Drama in the 1970s, striking pay dirt as a sketch writer and performer in the school’s lighthearted cabaret
venue, where his still-legendary contributions included I Don’t Generally Like Poetry But Have You Read
‘Trees’?, co-authored with fellow student Albert Innaurato. Durang went on to make his professional
playwriting debut at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1975 with The Idiots Karamazov (also co-written with
Innaurato), described by Durang as a “madcap dash through Western literature.” The Yale production
starred Meryl Streep—herself a graduate student—as an addled 80-year-old “translatrix” incapable of
keeping her Russian classics straight.
Durang subsequently lent his estimable satiric talents to the off-Broadway cult favorite Das Lusitania
Songspiel, a Brecht-Weill parody created and performed by Durang and Yale classmate Sigourney
Weaver, and he began to gain wider recognition with A History of the American Film, his affectionate and
incisive spoof of the Hollywood dream machine, presented in several regional theaters and on Broadway.
But it was Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and Beyond Therapy that established him as a
comic writer of substance and staying power. Sister Mary Ignatius, a thoroughly scathing and appallingly
funny burlesque of a Catholic school education (of which Durang is a product) dared to reveal the
principled outrage underlying its audacity, while the more genial lunacy of Beyond Therapy—which takes
aim at the excesses of psychoanalysis, 80s-style—was likewise grounded in recognizable emotional truth.
In these and subsequent plays—Baby With the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Laughing
Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation—Durang got personal, using the stage as a deliriously empowering bully
pulpit to exorcise his own demons and to pillory our needy, neurotic, and over stimulated age, perfecting,
along the way, his distinctive passive/aggressive comic sensibility, one that is idiosyncratic, barbed, and
hyperbolic, but never shrill or mean-spirited. In an afterword to Baby With the Bathwater, a dysfunctional
family play (that is, a play about a dysfunctional family, not a family play that’s dysfunctional) centered
on Daisy, who is subjected to a variety of questionable parenting techniques, Durang had this to say about
his method: “Taking Daisy’s pain . . . seriously at the same time that I expect the audience to find humor
in it has become for me the definition of my style, or at least what I intend it to be: Absurdist comedy
married to real feelings.”
THE ULTIMATE DURANG/CHEKHOV
GUIDE
More about Christopher Durang:
Christopher Durang’s Website:
http://www.christopherdurang.com/
Durang interviews Durang in 2005:
http://www.mccarter.org/Education/
miss-witherspoon/15.htm
Selected Quotes from Christopher
Durang’s Plays:
http://www.mccarter.org/Education
/miss-witherspoon/5.htm
More about
Anton Chekhov:
What is Chekhovian?
http://www.mccarter.org/Education/vanya
/vanya.html#chekhovian
Excerpt of a reminiscence of Chekhov
written by Maxim Gorky.
http://www.mccarter.org/Education/
vanya/vanya.html#talking
The Anton Chekhov Page:
http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/yr/Anton
_Chekhov.html
CORE CURRICULUM STANDARDS
According to the NJ Department of Education, “experience with and knowledge of the arts is a vital part of a complete
education.” Our production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and the activities outlined in this guide are designed
to enrich your students’ education by addressing the following specific Core Curriculum Content Standards for Visual
and Performing Arts:
1.1
1.2
The Creative Process: All students will demonstrate an understanding of the elements and
principles that govern the creation of works of art in dance, music, theatre, and visual art.
History of the Arts and Culture: All students will understand the role, development, and influence of the
arts throughout history and across cultures.
1.3
Performance: All students will synthesize those skills, media, methods, and technologies
appropriate to creating, performing, and/or presenting works of art in dance, music, theatre, and
visual art.
1.4
Aesthetic Responses & Critique Methodologies: All students will demonstrate and apply an
understanding of arts philosophies, judgment, and analysis to works of art in dance, music,
theatre, and visual art.
Viewing Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and then participating in the pre- and post-show discussions and activities
suggested in this audience guide will also address the following Core Curriculum Content Standards in Language Arts
Literacy:
3.1
Reading: All students will understand and apply the knowledge of sounds, letters, and words in
written English to become independent and fluent readers, and will read a variety of materials
and texts with fluency and comprehension.
3.2
Writing: All students will write in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and
form for different audiences and purposes.
3.3
Speaking: All students will speak in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content
and form for different audiences and purposes.
3.4
Listening: All students will listen actively to information from a variety of sources in a variety
of situations.
3.5
Viewing and Media Literacy: All students will access, view, evaluate, and respond to print,
non-print, and electronic texts and resources.
BEFORE THE SHOW
Educators: We recommend that you use one or more of the assignments and activities in this document
to introduce your students to Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike and its context, and themes, as well
as to engage their imaginations and creativity before they see the production.
(click to view printer-friendly PDF)
AFTER THE SHOW
Educators: We recommend that you use the questions, and activities in this document to have students
evaluate their experience of the performance ofVanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, as well as to
encourage further exploration of the play in production. Consider also that some of the pre-show
questions and activities might enhance your students’ experience following the performance.
(click to view printer-friendly PDF)