Who is David Lindsay-Abaire?

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David Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright who wrote Fuddy Meers, among others. He grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, in a family of five he described as "very blue collar." His mother was a factory worker and his father worked for the Chelsea, New York fruit market. Abaire attended Boston public schools until the seventh grade, when he received a six-year scholarship to the Milton Academy, a small, private New England boarding school. He first became interested in playwrighting there, where he contributed what he called "terrible, terrible plays" as a result of the school's tradition of presenting original student work. He went on to concentrate in theatre at Sarah Lawrence College, and was accepted into the highly prestigious Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Julliard School, where he wrote under the tutelage of Marsha Norman and Christopher Durang.

David has received commissions from South Coast Rep, Dance Theater Workshop and the Jerome Foundation, as well as awards from the Berilla Kerr Foundation, the Lincoln Center LeComte du Nuoy Fund, Mixed Blood Theater, Primary Stages, The Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and the South Carolina Playwrights Festival.

Among his influences, Lindsay-Abaire lists playwrights John Guare, Edward Albee, Georges Feydeau, Eugène Ionesco, and George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, 1930s screwball comedy films My Man Godfrey and 20th century or "anything by Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, the Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello." Walking a fine line between grave reality and joyous lunacy, the world of his plays is often dark, funny, blithe, enigmatic, hopeful, ironic- and somewhat cock-eyed. "My plays tend to be peopled with outsiders in search of clarity."

He returned to the scene of his Fuddy Meers success, the Manhattan Theatre Club, last fall with Wonder of the World, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, about a wife who suddenly leaves her husband, and hops a bus to Niagara Falls in search of freedom, enlightenment and the meaning of life. Other plays he has written include, Rabbit Hole (2006)[original production starring Cynthia Nixon, Tyne Daly, John Slattery], Kimberly Akimbo (2000), Wonder of the World (2000), Dotting and Dashing (1999), Snow Angel (1999), The L'il Plays (1997) and A Devil Inside'' (1997).

David also has writing credit on two screenplays: Robots (2006) and Inkheart (2006).

He is married to actress Christine Lindsay-Abaire.

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