In my 20s, I was more cynical/despairing (even though I still wrote comically), but I often sent audiences home with rather dark last moments. After a while though, I don't want to send the audience home bummed out, or distressed ... I want to see what's hopeful. I'm not overly cheery all the time, and yet I'm not suicidal either. I do think people can make choices that make their lives happier.
Christopher DurangI write intuitively, and with most of my plays, I don't know what is always going to happen. This means I can sometimes go off on a wrong tangent, and with luck then rewrite it in a better direction. But it means I sometimes surprise myself as I'm going along.
Christopher DurangAs a citizen I felt appalled that we WENT TO WAR over faulty information - that felt false or at least "stretched" from the first time they started to push the idea that Iraq and 9/11 were connected, though they didn't seem to be and there was no logical reason for thinking they were. It's like your neighbors the Smiths burned your house down, and then the next day you retaliated by burning down the Jones' house.
Christopher DurangSo many American plays are about family. When you're in the first part of your life, you write about family a lot. I find with my absurdist plays that I was actually writing about my family, but so disguised I didn't realize it myself.
Christopher DurangIt is a sin to follow your horoscope because only God knows the future and He won't tell us. Also, we can tell horoscopes are false because according to astrology, Christ would have been a Capricorn, and Capricorn people are cold, ambitious and attracted to Scorpio and Virgo, and we know that Christ was warm, loving, and not attracted to anybody.
Christopher Durang