The following was published along with the full text of Betty’s Summer Vacation, which appeared in our December 1999 issue.
CHRISTOPHER DURANG: Hello, may I call you Christopher?
CHRISTOPHER DURANG: I’d prefer Mr. Durang. Or Mr. Albee, perhaps.
Well, I’ll call you Chris. Anyway, I read somewhere that you wrote Betty’s Summer Vacation thinking you were going to write a lighthearted play about fond memories of the beach.
That’s true. Beyond Therapy earns me my most consistent royalties, and I decided it’s because it’s a friendly play—the characters are eccentric, but they mean well, they’re kind of sweet. So I hoped to write a friendly play, drawing on a number of fond memories of times at the New Jersey seashore as a child and teenager. And for the first two pages or so, the play was kind of light, but then on the third page a serial killer walked in—and, well, then the play changed. And kept changing.
You don’t outline plays first? You must have trouble working in television.
Yes, I do. In television, they like you to tell them in advance what your characters will say, do and think on every single page before you write it. And that’s why there’s such a sense of spontaneity in most TV shows.
Do you view Betty’s as one of your darker plays?
I’m reminded of something said by my fellow playwright Albert Innaurato, with whom I wrote and acted in cabarets when we were students at Yale. Albert was a wild card as an actor and would come forth with startling ad-libs—my favorite being, “Mother Roosevelt! Get those frogs away from your private parts! You’ll infect them!” That was an ad-lib, mind you. Anyway, in some sketch Albert and I were playing mother and daughter, and he said something outrageous, and my character said, “Mommy, you’ll offend everyone,” and Albert boomed back, “Bull fwackey! It makes me laugh, it’ll make anyone laugh!” So that is a somewhat long way of saying that my plays make me laugh, and so initially I assume everyone else will find them funny, too. I lose sense, I’m afraid, of what will bother people and what won’t. Plus, as we discovered in previews for Betty’s, some audiences would laugh their heads off kind of nonstop; and then the next night we’d have an audience in which some members were clearly unhappy and wished they weren’t there.
What do you think of audiences who are offended by your plays?
I think they should be killed. No, no, no, really. I’m just kidding. 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 serious and tragic. And some people hate that. It’s like not wanting to mix your peas and mashed potatoes together—some people want them separate. (That’s an under-characterization, but it’s suggestive.)
I exaggerate awful things further, and then I present it in a way that is funny…and for those of us who find it funny, it has to do with a very clear suspension of disbelief. It is a play, after all, with acted characters; it allows us a distance we couldn’t have in reality. To me, this distance allows me to find some rather serious topics funny. Mrs. Siezmagraff, for instance, heaps enormous psychological abuse on her daughter; in life you would be alarmed by her and feel worried for the daughter. But I’ve not filmed a documentary, I’ve written a play. The characters are not real.
But there’s something about the seriousness of some of the topics I choose—incest and murder in this play, religious dogma in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You—that hits some audiences wrong. But, in truth, for every person bothered by my work, there seem to be five or six or seven who seem enthusiastic. Usually they’re mental patients. No, just kidding.
Why don’t you write about happy topics?
Well, I tried! But I had had a period of watching Court TV a lot, seeing much of the Menendez brothers’ trial and the trial of Lorena Bobbit, who cut off her husband’s penis while he slept—he sued her for bodily harm; and she sued him for being abusive to her in the past—and juries found them both innocent! Both. So nothing bad was done, apparently. Court TV-watching came together in my psyche and took over Betty’s Summer Vacation.
What are you working on now?
Nothing.
Nothing? That answer makes me uncomfortable.
Oh, sorry. Let me make something up then. I’m working on a new play based on fond memories of the seashore. There will be no serial killers or incest. Act I will be Friday; the characters will go fishing, and then have a dinner of red snapper and rice. Act 2 will be Saturday, and they will sleep in late and do a jigsaw puzzle. And then Sunday, a great big typhoon will come and kill them. Or, if that seems too cynical, perhaps they will just get in the car and go home. And all of the characters will keep their peas and mashed potatoes separate.
