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Playwright and actor Christopher Durang will give a public lecture and reading from his works 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15, on the main stage in the Williams Center for the Arts. A book signing and reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public.
Durang is this year’s Closs Visiting Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette. His talk is sponsored by the English department through the Ruth Mary Callahan Closs Fund.
The author of numerous plays, Durang has won critical acclaim for his work, including Obie Awards for Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Betty’s Summer Vacation, and The Marriage of Bette and Boo, and a Tony nomination for A History of the American Film. His most recent play, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them, debuted at the Public Theatre in New York this past spring.
Other plays Durang has written include Beyond Therapy, which appeared on Broadway in 1982, The Actor’s Nightmare, Baby with the Bathwater, Laughing Wild, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, Sex and Longing, Adrift in Macao, and Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge.
As an actor he has appeared in movies including The Secret of My Success, Mr. North, The Butcher’s Wife, Housesitter, and The Cowboy Way.
Durang is co-chair of the Playwrights Program at the Julliard School in New York, a position he has held since 1994. He has a B.A. in English from Harvard and an M.F.A. in playwriting from Yale School of Drama.