About
Christopher Durang has run the Juilliard playwrights program since its inception, in 1994, with Marsha Norman. A New Jersey native, he attended Harvard College and the Yale School of Drama, where he studied English and playwriting, respectively. He has also taught at Yale and Princeton, but most of his energy goes toward his award-winning playwriting career. This month, the PEN American Center will name him the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Awards master dramatist (one of his former Juilliard students, Adam Rapp, will be one of two winners of the Pels Foundation’s midcareer awards). Also this month, Durang’s latest play arrives at Lincoln Center Theater. Called Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, it’s a comic mash-up inspired by Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, and it begins previews on October 25. A joint production of L.C.T. and McCarter Theater (in Princeton, N.J.), it received its premiere at McCarter in September.