life with more cowbell

David Lindsay-Abaire (don’t sneer – he was born David Abaire in working-class South Boston, but he and his wife, an actress formerly known as Christine Lindsay, both use the hyphenated surname) won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Rabbit Hole. This play was quite a departure for him – his previous works tended to be dark comedies – Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo, Wonder of the World – and although they “did mostly really well” , the playwright noted that “certain critics dismissed them out of hand for being ridiculous and absurdist and cartoon-y.”

He attended prestigious schools like Julliard and Sarah Lawrence College on scholarship. At Julliard, his instructors included playwrights Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman. It was Norman who urged him to “write about what scares you most”. At the time, Lindsay-Abaire was in his early 20s and “honestly didn’t know what that was”. But…