David Auburn is a forty-seven year old successful playwright, director, screenwriter, husband and father. Born in Chicago, Auburn then grew up in Ohio and Arkansas, where he developed his deep love for the arts. Attending the University of Chicago, he joined “Off Off Campus Theater Group”, where he began acting and writing plays and monologues. Auburn also became a critic in his university’s newspaper. Shortly after majoring in English Literature(1991), Auburn accepted a Stephen Spielberg Fellowship and studied in Los Angeles. In 1992, he moved to New York, met his wife-to-be and was accepted into Juilliard School’s Playwriting Program. There, he wrote monologues (some of which were published in the Middlebury College’s New England Review),
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What is most likely a progressed case of Paranoid Schizophrenia with random bouts of clarity in between manic episodes has made trusting anything Robert says impossible. “This is a man who, after rocking the world with his proofs, began attempting to decipher the Dewey Decimal codes of library books because he was convinced that they held secret messages”(Guyette 1). Robert’s months of clarity are discussed through Catherine when she wants to try going back to school: “You’ve been well--really well--for almost seven months. I don’t think you need me here every minute of the day” (Auburn 1211). She thought he was well enough to take care of himself. She trusted that his clear-headedness would continue. But, when she returned home half way through a semester of studying mathematics at Northwestern University, she finds he has returned to his ill state of mind when she reads aloud from the notebook Robert claims contains a proof, “Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X... It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature”(Auburn 1226). After this traumatizing incident that left her feeling alone and hurt, Catherine also feels her
What is most likely a progressed case of Paranoid Schizophrenia with random bouts of clarity in between manic episodes has made trusting anything Robert says impossible. “This is a man who, after rocking the world with his proofs, began attempting to decipher the Dewey Decimal codes of library books because he was convinced that they held secret messages”(Guyette 1). Robert’s months of clarity are discussed through Catherine when she wants to try going back to school: “You’ve been well--really well--for almost seven months. I don’t think you need me here every minute of the day” (Auburn 1211). She thought he was well enough to take care of himself. She trusted that his clear-headedness would continue. But, when she returned home half way through a semester of studying mathematics at Northwestern University, she finds he has returned to his ill state of mind when she reads aloud from the notebook Robert claims contains a proof, “Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X... It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature”(Auburn 1226). After this traumatizing incident that left her feeling alone and hurt, Catherine also feels her