David Auburn (A.B. ’91), a playwright, screenwriter, and theater director, will be the Class Day speaker at this year’s convocation ceremonies, the University announced in February.
His play Proof won the Tony Award for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001. It will return to Broadway on March 31 starring Ayo Edebiri and Don Cheadle.
The Maroon spoke to Auburn to learn more about his experiences at UChicago and their influence on his career.
Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Chicago Maroon: Where did you grow up? When and how did you become interested in theater, playwriting, and screenwriting?
David Auburn: I was actually born in Chicago, but my parents moved to Columbus, Ohio when I was two. I lived there until I was 13 and then we lived in Arkansas. I came back to Chicago for college and my original plan was to be a political science major. I’d always been interested in theater and film but had no intention of making it my career.
But [being] in Chicago was a combination of being exposed to all the theater in the city—which was incredible at the time, and I think still is—and getting into [campus improv group] Off-Off Campus, which was then in its second year. Starting to write and perform comedy sketches changed my career path. I came out of college thinking I’d like to try to be a playwright.
CM: How did you find Off-Off Campus, and were you involved with other RSOs?
DA: I joined Off-Off Campus really early—definitely in the first or second quarter that I was at UChicago. It became a big part of my social life and my main extracurricular activity. I also did stuff with the Maroon, played intramural sports, and things like that. But the University Theater was the main place that I spent my time outside of class. Theater at that time was very much a DIY operation. There was no theater major, no theater classes that you could take. It made it something that was exciting to get involved in, because you could shape it almost entirely yourself and with your friends.
CM: Have you returned to watch any of their shows?
DA: I saw a show four or five years ago. It was great. It was really delightful to see what people are doing and how they’re approaching it. They’re remaking it, and they’re not doing the same things we did 30 years ago. But nor should they be. It’s thrilling to see it continuing and changing.
CM: You mentioned theater across the city. Did you attend many plays off-campus?
DA: I was going to stuff every week. There was no one reviewing plays for the Maroon. I finagled myself a role as a theater critic so that I could contact the theaters and hopefully get free tickets for things to review. A lot of them were really generous in letting me do that. I saw a lot of shows in those years that were kind of indelible, that really stayed with me.
CM: Are there any that come to mind?
DA: The Robert Falls production of The Iceman Cometh with Brian Dennehy was a major event. There was a Frank Galati production at the Goodman of The Winter’s Tale. There was a production at Remains Theater, which I don’t think exists anymore, with William Petersen of American Buffalo.
CM: You came in as a political science major, so I’m curious about when that shift occurred. When did you realize that you wanted to completely change your professional goals?
DA: There was a very specific moment, the summer after my sophomore year. I had gotten an internship working in the Chicago office of Paul Simon, who was the [U.S.] senator from Illinois at the time. That was part of what I imagined was my career trajectory, doing political science, and I was very eager to do that. At the same time, halfway through the summer, there was an opportunity to go to the Edinburgh Festival [Fringe] with Off-Off Campus.
For me those two things were conflicting and I thought, “What a terrible dilemma. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to decide.” And then I had that kind of epiphany of realizing, no, it’s not a dilemma at all. I’d much, much rather go to Edinburgh and perform and hang out at a theater festival. That was a clarifying moment: “If this is how I feel, then I probably should rethink my major.”
CM: I know there are some connections to Chicago in works of yours like The Adventures of Augie March and Proof. How do you think your time at UChicago has influenced your writing?
DA: The whole intellectual environment [in Chicago] was very formative for me—I had never gone to a place like this. I had never been surrounded by so many intelligent, intellectually focused, driven people. The whole ethos of the school really shaped my approach to writing and the idea that you have the tools to teach yourself the things you need to know.
A lot of the point of the College curriculum was to equip you with those tools, and it worked for me. I think it has enabled me to keep on learning new things and turning them into or incorporating them into bits of theater.
CM: Did you have any older students or professors who acted as mentors?
DA: Frank Kinahan was the faculty advisor for the comedy group. He was really instrumental in helping me think carefully and systematically about what we were doing and helping us learn about the history of review comedy and Chicago comedy. I had an English professor called Stuart Tave. I’m thinking of him because he actually just died, at the age of over 100, a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t take any drama classes with him; we were reading English literature. But he was very generous about reading my early attempts at plays and playwriting.
There was only one Off-Off generation older than us, but they were really smart, funny people. Some of them went on to have big time careers. Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann, who wrote Urinetown, were in that group. A bunch of them, in general, had ventured out and started storefront Chicago theater companies. They provided a really valuable model of how you could build a career in theater.
And it was, again, a kind of DIY model. You just started a group, produced yourself, developed your own work, found a space. You taught yourself basically what you needed to know and relied on one another to build a body of work—as opposed to sending your play to a stranger at a major theater.
CM: Do you have any favorite spots on campus?
DA: You can’t not say Jimmy’s. I spent a lot of time there. It’s not there anymore, but there used to be a café at Ida Noyes called Ida’s Cafe. They used to make great latkes—potato pancakes. I remember we used to usually eat there before we did an Off-Off Campus show, because at that time, those were performed in Ida Noyes. I just loved those like latke suppers before we were going to do a show. That was something I always looked forward to.
CM: Since graduating, how have you been involved with campus? Has your perspective on the school changed?
DA: I loved going to Chicago, and my feelings about that haven’t changed. I have been back a few times. I’ve done a couple of shows. I’ve done three shows at Court [Theatre], one of them as a director, two as a playwright. I’ve had some interactions, meeting with students and talking with people who are interested in doing the kind of thing I do. I continue to feel very warmly about the school and I’m proud of my association with it.
CM: What does your creative process look like when you’re approaching writing, directing, or other roles?
DA: The process is different on every project, and in a lot of ways. Figuring out how you’re going to approach something is inextricable from figuring out what you want to do. Every play gets written a little bit differently. Some of them are fast. Some of them are slow. Some of them come in one big chunk that you have to then hack away at. Some of them accrete slowly. The trick, or the challenge, is to be open and flexible to rethinking your process with every new project.
CM: Outside of writing and directing, what tends to occupy your time and attention? How do you find a work/life balance?
DA: I teach at Columbia in the M.F.A. department there. I help run a theater in Massachusetts, the Berkshire Theatre Group. I do some screenwriting. I do all those normal things you do in life. My kids are out of the house now, but I’ve raised a family and have a marriage. Work/life balance is a continual improvisation, and you never quite get it right, but you’re always adjusting and experimenting and trying to keep everything on track.
CM: As Class Day speaker, is there anything that you’re planning to discuss or want to leave students with?
DA: I’ll be discussing the importance of good penmanship… No, I want to talk about the general theme of uncertainty. Dealing with uncertainty is always present when you’re contemplating the next step in your life, but it seems to me to be particularly present now in an age when so many things are shifting so rapidly, technologically and politically and environmentally and in every other way. I’m going to try to say something hopefully useful about that, although I don’t know what yet.
