Daily Inspiration Quote by Christopher Durang

Durang turns a professional indignity into a craft problem, which is his slyest move. The line starts with a petty, recognizable truth: artists resent having to sell themselves. The “pitch” is commerce barging into art’s living room, asking it to smile. Instead of pretending he’s above it, Durang admits the resentment outright, then pulls the trapdoor: he reframes pitching as performance. If the market demands a persona, fine - he’ll treat that persona as a character.

The intent is practical and defensive. By calling it “an acting job,” he converts vulnerability into technique. A pitch isn’t a confession of need; it’s a scene with objectives, beats, and an audience. That mental switch restores agency. He’s no longer begging gatekeepers to like him; he’s playing someone who knows how to persuade. The subtext is also a little acidic: the industry has made authenticity impossible, so the sane response is to professionalize the mask.

Context matters because Durang’s whole theatrical brand is built on exposing social scripts - Catholic guilt, bourgeois manners, institutional hypocrisy - by exaggerating them until they wobble. Here, he’s admitting the meta-version of that: even the artist’s “sincere” self-presentation is just another script. There’s wit in the shrug, but also a grim clarity about survival. If art is going to be packaged, Durang implies, at least you can control the packaging by treating it as theater rather than truth.