The Nature and Purpose of the Universe is a play written by Christopher Durang, first produced in 1975. The work is an absurdist comedy concerning the irony of Catholic dogma, a theme visited in other Durang plays, including Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Laughing Wild, and The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Nature and Purpose deals primarily with an unhappy housewife's religious faith being tested by nightmarish circumstances which church dogma teaches she must willingly endure.