Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Reared in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Christopher Durang spent his childhood acting out plays that he based on television and movie characters. His 12 years in repressive Roman Catholic schools as well as traumatic elements in his home life became the basis for the dark humor of his later plays.

Known as one of America's angry young playwrights, Durang has focused his satirical wit on Hollywood's myth-making cinemas, the Catholic church, contemporary psychoanalytic practices, and the problems of individual and family identity. Although he has enjoyed only limited success on Broadway, he has become a major voice off-Broadway and in America's burgeoning regional and university theaters.

Durang developed as a playwright during the early 1970s while working under Robert Brustein at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Much of his work during this period brought him little critical attention. However, in 1976 his satirical play, A History of the American Film, was read at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. The following year the play was premiered at the Hartford Stage Company, the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and the Arena Stage in Washington. By the close of the decade, the play had become a regional theatre favorite.

Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You opened in 1979 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York as