David Auburn, aged 30 when Proof was first produced in 2000, was born in Chicago and raised in Arkansas. There his father was a professor of English specializing in the work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the eighteenth-century British playwright. Thus, like the main character in Proof, Auburn was raised in an academic environment and has walked--approximately--in his father's professional footsteps.
Auburn attended the University of Chicago (home to Proof's demented math professor) where he majored in political philosophy and studied calculus. He also began working in theater, writing and performing sketch comedy for a group named Off Off Campus, and serving as theater reviewer for the college newspaper.
Despite his academic interest in politics, he turned down an offer to work for Illinois Senator, Paul Simon, during the summer of his sophomore year. Instead he attended the Edinburgh Festival, an annual international celebration of the performing arts in Scotland.
The next stop in his developing career was Los Angeles, where he was the recipient of a Steven Spielberg fellowship in screenwriting. After that, it was off to New York and a brief detour as the author of labels for rug shampoo containers. This was followed by enrollment in the playwriting program of the renowned Julliard School. There Auburn studied under such established dramatists as Marsha Norman (author of 'Night Mother), and Christopher Durang (Beyond Therapy and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You). As a Julliard student, he wrote Skyscraper, a comedy set in Chicago, which was produced Off Broadway in 1997.
Following that play's brief run, Auburn moved to London where his fiancée was working on her Ph.D. There he began writing Proof, drawing on his experiences at the University of Chicago. As he told an interviewer for The New York Times, "He recalled one professor who taught chemistry all day and 'then would spend his free time marching around his neighborhood with a broomstick chanting the song from The Bridge on the River Kwai at the top of his voice.'" Says Auburn in that interview, "I think there is some connection between extremely prodigious mathematical ability and craziness. . . . [T]hose with edgy or slightly irrational personalities are drawn to it."
Working with the memory of these eccentric Chicago academics in mind, Auburn began organizing his play around a related pair of ideas: "One was to write about two sisters who are quarrelling over the legacy of something left behind by their father. The other was about someone who knew that her parent had had problems of mental illness" and faced the possibility that "she might be going through the same thing." These ideas turned into the conflict between Catherine, the daughter of a brilliant but mentally unstable mathematician, and Claire, her utterly conventional sister. The "legacy" became a mathematical proof, an appealing device because, says Auburn, "In math, someone could have done something major working alone in an attic." Unlike a scientific discovery produced by teams of researchers in a laboratory, the proof could have remained secret, its authorship subject to dispute--a dispute that then becomes the core of the play.
Proof won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.
Auburn attended the University of Chicago (home to Proof's demented math professor) where he majored in political philosophy and studied calculus. He also began working in theater, writing and performing sketch comedy for a group named Off Off Campus, and serving as theater reviewer for the college newspaper.
Despite his academic interest in politics, he turned down an offer to work for Illinois Senator, Paul Simon, during the summer of his sophomore year. Instead he attended the Edinburgh Festival, an annual international celebration of the performing arts in Scotland.
The next stop in his developing career was Los Angeles, where he was the recipient of a Steven Spielberg fellowship in screenwriting. After that, it was off to New York and a brief detour as the author of labels for rug shampoo containers. This was followed by enrollment in the playwriting program of the renowned Julliard School. There Auburn studied under such established dramatists as Marsha Norman (author of 'Night Mother), and Christopher Durang (Beyond Therapy and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You). As a Julliard student, he wrote Skyscraper, a comedy set in Chicago, which was produced Off Broadway in 1997.
Following that play's brief run, Auburn moved to London where his fiancée was working on her Ph.D. There he began writing Proof, drawing on his experiences at the University of Chicago. As he told an interviewer for The New York Times, "He recalled one professor who taught chemistry all day and 'then would spend his free time marching around his neighborhood with a broomstick chanting the song from The Bridge on the River Kwai at the top of his voice.'" Says Auburn in that interview, "I think there is some connection between extremely prodigious mathematical ability and craziness. . . . [T]hose with edgy or slightly irrational personalities are drawn to it."
Working with the memory of these eccentric Chicago academics in mind, Auburn began organizing his play around a related pair of ideas: "One was to write about two sisters who are quarrelling over the legacy of something left behind by their father. The other was about someone who knew that her parent had had problems of mental illness" and faced the possibility that "she might be going through the same thing." These ideas turned into the conflict between Catherine, the daughter of a brilliant but mentally unstable mathematician, and Claire, her utterly conventional sister. The "legacy" became a mathematical proof, an appealing device because, says Auburn, "In math, someone could have done something major working alone in an attic." Unlike a scientific discovery produced by teams of researchers in a laboratory, the proof could have remained secret, its authorship subject to dispute--a dispute that then becomes the core of the play.
Proof won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.