About the Plays:

This collection of 6 plays demonstrates that laughter is the best surgery, slicing through prejudice and hypocrisy, cutting out dead beliefs and inflamed opinions. Few playwrights have explored as relentlessly as Christopher Durang the pain and confusion of everyday life — or made us laugh so 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 authority), remains as powerful today as when it was originally produced. (Cast: (3 female, 3 male)

The excruciatingly funny The Nature and Purpose of the Universe asks whether Eleanor Mann's Job-like suffering is really her fault. (Cast: 2 female, 7 male)

Titanic takes us into the heart of children's anger with their parents and parents' manipulation of their children. (Cast: 2 female, 4 male)

In Beyond Therapy (one of Christopher Durang's most popular and frequently performed plays), two horrifyingly human therapists pursue their own needs at the expense of the most mismatched couple ever to meet through a personal ad. (Cast: 2 female, 4 male)

This collection also includes 'Dentity Crisis (Cast: 2 men, 3 women) and The Actor's Nightmare (Cast: 3 female, 2 male).

These dark comedies, lit by lightning bolts of truth and humour, are among the most illuminating in American drama, by "one of the most explosively funny American dramatists" (Newsweek).

What people say:

"Durang is probably best known for 'Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You', which ignited storms of protest and played to sold-out houses wherever it was produced in the early 1980s. Durang uses his absurd humor to challenge the rigidity of some religious beliefs, as well as homophobia, methods of psychoanalysis, marriage, and parenthood…. His plays may offend some, but they are always thought-provoking and entertaining." — Library Journal

About the Playwright:

Christopher Durang (1949-2024) was an award-winning American playwright and actor. One of the most popular playwrights of the 20th century, his plays have been produced on and off-Broadway, in regional theatres around the US and abroad. He received a B.A. in English from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale School of Drama. He was the co-chair of the Playwriting Program at the Juilliard School in Manhattan from its inception in 1994 to 2016.