Born in 1969, David Lindsay-Abaire grew up in South Boston, the son of a factory worker and a fruit peddler. He studied playwriting at the Julliard School in New York with Christopher Durang as his teacher. The influence of the latter, black comedian and chronicler of domestic dysfunction and moral deformity, is apparent in Lindsay-Abarie’s writing, especially in Fuddy Meers with its gothic family of cripples, arsonists, drug-abusers, and criminals.
Asked to identify the “original impulse” that prompted this play about an amnesiac woman named Claire who must re-learn every day the basic facts of her life, the playwright recalls that he,
Asked to identify the “original impulse” that prompted this play about an amnesiac woman named Claire who must re-learn every day the basic facts of her life, the playwright recalls that he,
had seen a news report on a book about various neurological disorders, and one of the stories featured this specific form of amnesia where everything is erased when you fall asleep. I filed the idea away thinking it might be something to use in a play.
The most haunting questions for the dramatist concerned the beginning and ending of each day of such a person’s life: “What is it like to wake up and not recognize the bed you're in, the clothes you're wearing, the people around you? . . . . And what is it like at the end of the day for this family? After living a full day with her, making strides and filling in those blank spaces, what is it like when she starts yawning? What is it like to lose her all over again? How does it feel knowing tomorrow may be exactly the same, and despite everything that's occurred, nothing has changed?"
He also acknowledges that Claire’s amnesia is a “convenient device to get out exposition. The audience is right in Claire's head, being told all sorts of tidbits. Like her, they also have no idea who anyone is, what information is pertinent, or whom to believe.”
Lindsay-Abaire acknowledges a Mulligan-stew of influences on his work: “John Guare, Tina Howe, Joe Orton, Sam Shepard, Christopher Durang, Edward Albee, Feydeau, Ionesco, Chekhov, Kaufman and Hart. Also 19th-century novelists, namely Dstoevsky and Tolstoy (the Russians), and Dickens. 1930's screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century or anything by Preston Sturges. Frank Capra. The Marx Brothers. Abbott & Costello. And even less erudite influences like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and Monty Python.”
This crazy-quilt of sources, ranging from the tragic to the farcical, and from high-brow literature to low-brow T.V., suggests the kind of emotional roller-coaster the playwright creates in his work, careening from the serious to the ludicrous and back again in a dizzying whirlwind of dramatic energy.
He also acknowledges that Claire’s amnesia is a “convenient device to get out exposition. The audience is right in Claire's head, being told all sorts of tidbits. Like her, they also have no idea who anyone is, what information is pertinent, or whom to believe.”
Lindsay-Abaire acknowledges a Mulligan-stew of influences on his work: “John Guare, Tina Howe, Joe Orton, Sam Shepard, Christopher Durang, Edward Albee, Feydeau, Ionesco, Chekhov, Kaufman and Hart. Also 19th-century novelists, namely Dstoevsky and Tolstoy (the Russians), and Dickens. 1930's screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century or anything by Preston Sturges. Frank Capra. The Marx Brothers. Abbott & Costello. And even less erudite influences like I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and Monty Python.”
This crazy-quilt of sources, ranging from the tragic to the farcical, and from high-brow literature to low-brow T.V., suggests the kind of emotional roller-coaster the playwright creates in his work, careening from the serious to the ludicrous and back again in a dizzying whirlwind of dramatic energy.