By Brian S. Brijbag, Esq.
There’s a special kind of theatre that doesn’t just entertain — it unhinges your expectations, flips them inside out, and then serves them back to you with a sly wink and a perfectly timed blackout.
When people ask what kind of plays I write, I sometimes fumble.
“Absurdist.”
“Dark comedy.”
“Meta-theatrical, structurally chaotic, character-driven… things?”
But really, my work lives in the long shadow — or maybe spotlight — of two giants:
David Ives and Christopher Durang.
They’re the master craftsmen of madness. The playwrights who taught me that chaos can be elegant, and that precision is what makes absurdity sing.
Let’s talk about why.
🎭 The Myth of the “Random” Play
People often misunderstand absurdist or comedic theatre as “random.” As if it’s just nonsense poured into dialogue form. But anyone who’s ever tried to write a one-act in the style of Ives or Durang knows: this kind of chaos is built with surgical precision.
The timing.
The rhythm.
The slow-burn of a setup that explodes 37 lines later.
The offhand remark that becomes the final image.
In short: it only works if it’s deliberate.
It only feels chaotic because it’s so tightly choreographed.
🧠 David Ives: Language As Weapon and Playground
If Shakespeare and Steve Martin had a baby raised on black-and-white sitcoms and word puzzles, that child would grow up to be David Ives.
From Sure Thing to The Universal Language to Words, Words, Words, Ives treats language not just as dialogue, but as a game of physics.
He’s not writing “talk.” He’s writing calibrated detonations.
Why Ives Matters to Me:
- His characters are always on the edge of something true, even when the premise is ridiculous.
- He finds emotion in absurd structure. The laughs sneak up. The ache hits harder.
- He shows that constraint is creative fuel: his plays are tight, short, and impossibly effective.
I learned from Ives that if you control the rhythm, you control the room.
That’s why in my plays, you’ll find quick turns, formal experiments, repeated beats. Not because they’re trendy — but because language is music, and I want the audience tapping their fingers while they laugh (or panic).
🌀 Christopher Durang: Madness With a Pulse
Where Ives is surgical, Christopher Durang is… gloriously deranged.
Plays like The Actor’s Nightmare, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, and Baby with the Bathwater exist on the edge of a nervous breakdown — and that’s the point.
Durang writes the kind of comedy that feels like screaming into a pillow while someone throws confetti at your face.
And yet — every absurd moment reveals something brutal, something social, something real.
Why Durang Matters to Me:
- He understands that ridiculous characters can say devastating truths.
- He doesn’t apologize for his tonal shifts — from slapstick to theology to existential dread in one scene.
- He taught me that you don’t need to write “realistic” characters to reflect real emotion.
Durang makes the grotesque feel intimate, and that’s something I constantly chase in my own work.
A character may be arguing with a garden gnome, but the pain beneath it? It’s never fake.
🧰 The Craft of Controlled Chaos
Here’s the secret:
To make chaos feel alive, you have to design every beat like a watchmaker.
The playwrights I admire most — Ives, Durang, even Beckett, Churchill, and Stoppard — don’t just write chaos.
They craft it.
They make every misstep intentional.
They make nonsense land like a punchline or a gut-punch — depending on your aim.
In my own plays, like The Last Key Lime Pie or Funeral of god, I aim for that same paradox:
- Laughter built on timing so tight it looks effortless
- Monologues that veer into madness but end with a shiver of recognition
- Structure that bends, stretches, even mocks itself — but always serves a deeper engine
🧵 What Ives and Durang Taught Me (And Might Teach You)
- Structure is your sandbox. Chaos is your shovel.
Don’t be afraid to dig — but know where the walls are. - Precision is comedy’s secret weapon.
A pause half a second too long? Flat line. Hit it right? Applause break. - Truth wears a funny mask.
Just because your character is in a bear suit doesn’t mean they can’t say something that breaks the room. - Don’t explain the joke.
Let the audience work a little. Trust them to catch up. Invite them into the dance. - Write the play like it’s your last chance to be heard — but edit it like you’re not even there.
🧶 Final Thought: Precision Is Love
When I write absurdist theater, it’s not because I don’t care about the world.
It’s because I care so much, I need to rewire it just to make sense of it.
Ives and Durang remind me that comedy — real, crafted, sharpened comedy — is a form of precision empathy.
So when you see a Brijbag play where someone sues a duck boat captain or files a legal complaint against a haunted gnome, know this:
It’s funny.
It’s strange.
And every chaotic moment was written on purpose.
Brian Brijbag 