• Born January 2, 1949. In Montclair, New Jersey
• Educated at Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama
• Performs both on and off Broadway, for both stage and screen.
• Member of Dramatists Guild Council, co-chair of the play-writing program at Juilliard.
• Won the Obie Awards for Sister Mary Ignatius and The Marriage of Bette and Boo
• Received a Drama Desk nomination for Betty's Summer Vacation
• Awarded many fellowships and grants including Guggenheim, a Rockefeller and the CBS Playwright Fellowship, the Kenyon Festival Theater Play-writing Prize, the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers Award.
• "I think my sense of humor -- especially in something like Betty's -- asks for a complicated response. I ask people to laugh at things that I know are also very serious and tragic."

"Dizzying, disturbing wildness.. a little comic masterpiece" -- Lloyd Rose

"Betty's Summer Vacation is an exhausting experience and it requires you to hang your2 sense of what is right and proper on the door of the theatre before you2 enter. But if your of sufficiently broad mind, it is a scathing,2 unsettling boisterously entertaining evening" -- studio theatre

"Just how much is the human mind, specifically the American mind, able to withstand the onslaught of media hype. More importantly, how much of the horror reported in the media is palatable to the human psyche. Is there a "sex, murder, and mayhem" threshold to the human conscience? Betty's Summer Vacation has the answers to these questions and to many others you wouldn't even think to ask." --David Roberts for Theatre Reviews Limited

"Betty's Summer Vacation is an exhausting experience and it requires you to hang your sense of what is right and proper on the door of the theatre before you enter."

-- Variety

"Christopher Durang is an anarchic moralist with a mission to entertain."

-- New York Times

Our take on the theme

Set in modern times, this play is largely a satire of today's culture. It mocks the way we entertain ourselves and allows us to be horrified by our own sense of humour. The only reason the humour in the play seems shallow is because we are.

The character of the three voices serves as a representation for mass culture, the voice laughs at things that should not be funny at all, things like rape, incest, murder and mayhem. The sort of things that would not be funny if they happened to you.

Constantly making references to celebrities and public figures such as Gwenyth Paltrow, Brad Pitt, Micheal Jackson and OJ Simpson, the voices crave attention and demand to be entertained by the suffering of others. Just like mainstream society, the more horrible the situation is, the more entertaining it is. Some examples of this are references to Micheal Jackson's child molestation charges, the Bobbits' trial and the Menendez brothers.

Entertainment is so craved that the voices even try to convince the other characters to commit terrible acts, for no reason other than their own enjoyment. Almost all of the many cultural references serve to show how fascinated the average person is with things that are tragic, or unacceptable. The cultural references are reminders of how an uncaring mass can be cruelly entertained by the miseries of others, just as we the viewer are entertained by the misfortunes of those onstage.

About The Playwrights Horizons Theater in New York

Playwrights Horizons, founded by Robert Moss in 1971, touts itself as a writer's theater, devoted to discovery, dedicated to the creation and production of new American plays and musicals. It offers many programs and activities designed to support both established and emerging playwrights throughout the writing process. It is here where Betty's Summer Vacation got its start in 1998.

Celebrating its 30th anniversary, it has presented the work of more than 300 writers, receiving numerous awards and honors, discovering many talented writers and actors and producing award winning musicals. Playwrights Horizons has developed and produced several plays by Christopher Durang. In 1981-82 Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You won the Obie Award for playwriting.

(Many talented people have been discovered and honed their crafts at Playwrights Horizons besides the ones already mentioned; perhaps you recognize some of these few noted: Ted Tally, Kathy Bates, David Hyde Pierce, Calista Flockhart, Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, Ethan Hawke, Delroy Lindo, Mandy Patinkin, Lynn Redgrave, Kevin Spacey, Marisa Tomei and Stephen Sondheim.)