Jersey Native Takes Top Honors at 2013 Tony Awards

Northern New Jersey was represented at Sunday night's glittery Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall in New York City in the form of award-winning playwright Christopher Durang.

The Montclair-born, Berkeley Heights-raised Durang, 64, saw his "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" take away the Antoinette Perry statue for Best Play of the 2013 Tony season.

The play was commissioned by the McCarter Theater of Princeton, NJ.com reported, and featured a cast starring Sigourney Weaver and David Hyde Pierce.

Durang is no stranger to winning awards for his work. He's the acclaimed scribe behind theatrical on- and off-Broadway classics including "Beyond Therapy," "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, "The Actor's Nightmare" and "A History of the American Film." He's won received Obie Awards for "Sister Mary Ignatius," his "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" and "Betty's Summer Vacation." "A History of the American Film" was nominated for a Best Book for a Musical Tony in 1978.

The playwright, a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and co-chair of the Julliard School playwriting program, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2006 for "Miss Witherspoon." In 2010, Durang won the first-given Luminary Award by the Innovative Theatre Awards for his work Off-Off-Broadway. He also won the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award last year.

Despite all the honors earned in a career launched in the late 1950s, "Vanya and Spike"'s Best Play award marks the first Tony win for the celebrated author.