“Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them” follows Felicity, a young woman deeply fearful of the dangerous stranger, Zamir, whom she married while possibly drugged the night before. Felicity’s crackpot conservative father maims Zamir, who is suspected of terrorism, but Durang has the characters erase prior events in order to get a chance at a happy ending. “I thought there is no way I can keep going in this direction without this play being a downer,” he says. “So Felicity says, ‘I don’t want to be here anymore,’ and he says, ‘In the play or in life?’ and she says both. And then I decided I wanted to go back and say, ‘What could we do so this doesn’t happen?’”

When I saw The Public Theater’s production of the play, I felt cheated by how Durang had the characters undo prior events in order to get a chance at a happy ending. But in context of the arc of the Durang’s career, if not his life, it all makes sense. There is a type of courage in this newfound optimism. Durang, who still possesses his Catholic schoolboy manners even if he writes characters who stuff hedgehogs up their vaginas, does not cite a single personal event as responsible for this transition. And while Durang’s life does not follow the solid plot structure plays do, a lifetime of self-exploration—performing in “Bette and Boo,” overcoming the trauma of his childhood, and decades of therapy—all contribute to the newly bright light being cast on Durang’s dark matter.

He asks me whether mental health services are still free at Harvard. I reply that I believe they are.  “I can’t tell you how helpful I found talk therapy,” Durang says. “I still get depressed sometimes but that isn’t my life at all.”

—Staff writer Hayley C. Cuccinello can be reached at hcuccinello@college.harvard.edu.

"Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike," written by Christopher Durang and directed by Nicholas Martin, runs through January 13 at Lincoln Center Theater in New York City.

30 dollar tickets are available for 21-35 year olds through LincTix, a discount ticket program; see www.lct.org for more details.