Dear Angie,
Thank you for your informative email. That’s fabulous that those five plays are being done. Most unusual. And I’m intrigued that three are from my early, early days; and two (Betty’s Summer Vacation, and Miss Witherspoon) are pretty recent.
I haven’t yet answered your questions, but I just wrote that reporter, and I gave her some quotes and then I gave her some background on the plays too…
Let me share that with you, and tell me if there are any quotes in it that are good for your purposes… then I’ll still try to come up with answers for what you asked.
By the way, I love the name of your theatre!
Here’s the email I sent to the reporter:
—–
Cassie Walker
Chicago Magazine
Dear Ms. Walker,
Angela McMahon of the Chemically Imbalanced Comedy contacted me because her theatre and three other theatres are doing plays of mine. She said you were doing a short article on this, and would like a quote from me.
I don’t know your deadline, but let me give it a shot. Feel free to edit the comment, I realize the article is short.
Option 1:
“I am thrilled and a bit surprised that four Chicago theatres are doing five plays of mine (one is a double bill, thus the five). Two are works I wrote when I was pretty young (28-30), and two are recent works of mine (written at age 50 and age 55). The younger ones are more anarchic and wilder; the most recent one (“Miss Witherspoon”) is more thoughtful, I like to call it “a comedy to make you worry” to clue the audience the tone is different than my frenetic plays. Anyway, I’m very excited.”
The above is probably way too long… pick and choose.
Here are attempts at shorter quotes:
“Four theatres doing five of my plays over four months. 3 and 7 are usually my lucky numbers, but I will think about adopting 4. And maybe 5.”
Another attempt at a quote:
“5 different plays of mine in Chicago kind of all at once? How odd. But very nice.”
Well… is there something you can use? Hope so.
A bit of explanation from me in case it helps with your article:
“Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You” is done on a double bill with my play “The Actor’s Nightmare.” “Sister Mary” is the more substantative part of the evening – it usually runs 70 minutes long; and “Actor’s Nightmare” usually is done first as a “curtain raiser” and it runs 30 minutes.
In terms of when I wrote the plays I wrote “The Vietnamization of New Jersey” in 1977 when I was 28. It was done by Yale Repertory Theatre but is one of my less known plays (though recently it’s starting to be done; it’s very oddball, I like it).
I wrote “Sister Mary” in late 1979 when I was 30. It was done in a one act festival in 1980 at Ensemble Studio Theatre (and I won an Obie for writing), then it was redone in 1981 by Playwrights Horizons on a double bill with “The Actor’s Nightmare,” and this version moved to off-Broadway and ran for 2 and a half years.
I wrote “The Actor’s Nightmare” specifically to be on a bill with “Sister Mary”; I wrote it in 1981 when I was 32. I repeatedly have had that dream — dreaming I’m in a play but have never been to rehearsal and have to go on suddenly, not knowing anything — and had the impulse to write the play based on that. (Most people have had that dream, even people not in show business…)
Jump ahead to 1999! – and I wrote “Betty’s Summer Vacation,” when I was 50, and it was done by Playwrights Horizons. (I won an Obie for writing this play also.) Even though some of my later plays are gentler than my early ones (“Beyond Therapy” is gentler, for instance, I think), “Betty’s Summer Vacation” is a bit of a throw back to my frenetic style of writing, and tells a mad and exaggerated story of a disasterous vacation that mirrors our country’s obsession with tabloid horrors (such as the Menendez brothers killing their parents, Lureena Bobbit de-manning her husband, the Bill and Monica media frenzy, etc.). The play does have one normal character though — Betty — and the play ends with an attempt to find peace and calm, both in general and in the last minutes of the play itself.
“Miss Witherspoon” was written in 2004 (when I was 55), and it was presented the fall of 2005 in a joint premiere by McCarter Theatre (of Princeton) and Playwrights Horizons. It was a finalist for the Pulitizer Prize, which hasn’t happened for me before. It is a more mellow play, and though it doesn’t relate to specific political figures of the present, it is very much concerned with a woman who is in the afterlife and DOESN’T want to come back, she finds life too scary. How her spiritual guide gets her to reincarnate a few times, and what happens, is what the play is about.
Well more info than you need, I’m sure…but if any of it helps, that’s great.
If you need to contact me, please do. We lost power for some today, and we have thunderstorms due the next two days, which may put the electricity out again (as well as causing flooding. Global warming here, I’m afraid.)… so if you don’t hear back from me if you email me for any reason, feel free to call me at 000-000-0000.
Thanks. Best, Chris Durang
Hi,
I got one date off. I wrote “Miss Witherspoon” in 2004, and it was produced the fall of 2005 (not 2006, as I said by mistake). Thanks. Chris Durang