The Global Film Village

Why Torture is Wrong, and the People who Love Them an interview with Christopher Durang

// January 31st, 2010 // Stage Play

photo by Rick Baumgartner (c) The Blank Theatre Company. All Rights Reserved.

by Marla Lewin

I just spoke with Christopher Durang, who is off today, and preparing for a theatrical event in New York, with Michael Finestein and Barry Hemp for Dame Edna, called All about Me. Tonight he will be sleeping on his latest work, as they refine the show getting it ready for previews in mid-February.

His latest play Why Torture is Wrong, and the People who Love Them will have its West Coast Premiere with the Blank Theatre Company at the Stella Adler Theatre in Hollywood on January 30,2010. It is directed by Daniel Henning, artistic director/producer of the Blank.

A young woman is suddenly in crisis.  Is her new husband, whom she married when drunk, a terrorist? Or just crazy?  Or both?  Is her father’s hobby of butterfly collecting really a cover for his involvement in a shadow government?  Why does her mother enjoy going to the theatre so much?  Does she seek mental escape, or is she insane?

Honing in on our private terrors both at home and abroad, Durang oddly relieves our fears in this black comedy for an era of yellow, orange and red alerts.

The cast features (in alphabetical order) Nicholas Brendon, Christine Estabrook, Mike Genovese, Catherine Hicks, Sunil Malhotra, Alec Mapa, and Rhea Seehorn.

Marla: I asked, have you done musicals before?

Chris: I did musicals in high school, and many years ago at Yale Rep with Meryle Streep in the lead playing an 80 year old translator.

And then I did some Cabaret with Sigourney Weaver many years ago.  I live in New York. History of American Film played the Mark Taper before it went to Broadway back in the eighties.

Marla: Tell us about your latest play which will premiere in Los Angeles at the Blank Theatre. Why Torture is Wrong, and the People who Love Them? I read you played to raves in NY last spring, and it was called by some your funniest play yet.

Chris: I hope it is still funny, in the face of some terrorist events that have occurred since last spring.

Marla: Why did you feel you wanted to do this play.  The title is much more serious than your other plays.  I have read that you believe in combining comedy with substance.

Chris: I feel we should be concerned with terrorism, and the threat to homeland security.  I  have been very disturbed since 9-11 and although I basically understood why we went into Afghanistan, I didn’t understand our leaving there to then go into Iraq.  It did not quite make sense.  I couldn’t understand arresting people and not giving them a chance in front of a judge, and paying War Lords to point people out.

Marla: As a playwright, did you have concerns about freedom of speech?

Chris: My partner and I live in a rural type town, and I remember going to our local diner, and on the menu, someone had crossed off French Fries, and put Freedom Fries.  I had wondered if that was on all of the menus, or only ours.  That was when France didn’t want to go into Iraq.

Marla: Do you think this play would work as a film?

Chris: Most of my plays, I don’t see as films.  This could be compared to a Classic Dr. Stranglove I suppose.

Marla: You might be considered a master of Theatre of the Absurd.  How do you find humor in the characters and situation you create?

Chris: Thank you.  I think of Candide by Voltaire, and how as absurd as that play is, in the midst of horrible deaths in a war, and the seriousness of our time, their still is humor in human nature.   Comedy can be cathartic. I am pleased when audiences feel that way,  my wish is that the audiences will come out feeling good.  In my youth, I wasn’t concerned about this.

Marla: In college I played Charlotte Wallace, in Beyond Therapy.  I miss her.

Chris: So do I.  She was nutty, but very warm. She related to all the other characters in the play. It was my friendliest play.  Sigourney Weaver starred in the original on Broadway, and politician Glenda Jackson played her in the Robert Altman film version.

Marla: I remember missing the dress rehearsal, as I was reading the play aloud, and got so absorbed in the  comic timing and beats you gave her.  You seem like an architect of language.

Chris: I try to stay close to the written framing of the character, to get the laughs right. In my latest play, the female protagonist wakes up and sees a man in bed with her.  She discovered she married him, and his name is Amir, and he says he is Irish.  He wants her parents to give him money to start a business.  The father, played by Michael Genovese is very Red State.  He collects and carries guns.  There is a twist to the ending.  I don’t want to give it away.  The wave length of the play is funny. It’s unpredictable.  I feel good when I send people home happy.

The show runs from January 30 – March 14, 2010 at THE STELLA ADLER THEATRE, 6773 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA  90028