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All the Drama: Playwright David Auburn on ‘Proof,’ 2001 Winner, Pulitzer Prize for Drama
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A
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B
The year is 2001, which probably will always be remembered as the year of the September 11 attacks, in which Al Qaeda killed 2,977Americans, setting off the global war on terror that in one way or another continues to this day. But even earlier in the year, the US Found itself in the midst of historic changes. George W. Bush is inaugurated as the nation's 43rd president, making him only the second son of a former US president to assume the office his father once held. The US Economy slips into a recession, but Apple introduces its itunes app, making it easier for people to buy and consume music. And Wikipedia is launched, making information on just about everything available to just about everyone. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization focuses its annual report on mental health, calling for mental care to become a regular part of basic medical care. And in that spring of 2001, the Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Proof, an intimate family drama about the burdens of the legacies, welcomed and unwelcomed, that can be passed from one generation to the next. My name is Jan Simpson. Welcome to all the Drama, a podcast about the plays and musicals that have won American theater's highest accolade, the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Proof was only the second full length play by David Auburn to get a professional production, but the theater was part of the legacy that had been passed on to Auburn. He was born in Chicago on November 30, 1969, to Mark and Sandy Auburn, who had met while performing children's theater in college. When David was 2, the family moved to Columbus, Ohio, so that his dad, a professor who had written his dissertation on the works of the 18th century Anglo Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, could take a teaching position at Ohio State University. Ten years later, the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, where Mark Auburn took an administrative job in that state's university system. After graduating from high school in Little Rock in 1987, David returned to his birthplace to attend the University of Chicago, where he majored in political science. Thinking that he might eventually work for an international aid agency. But as a kid, Auburn had spent a lot of time at local community theaters, doing everything from acting to moving sets to working the lights. And so when he got to the University of Chicago, he hooked up with a sketch comedy group called Off Off Campus, and soon he was writing pieces for them to perform. After the group took one of its shows to the famous Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Auburn realized that he wanted to make his career in the theater. He spent weekends going to shows at Steppenwolf and the Goodman and at many of Chicago's smaller venues, too often reviewing them for the college newspaper. After graduating, he spent a year in Los Angeles on a Steven Spielberg fellowship for screenplay writing. But wanting to hone his storytelling skills even more, Auburn applied and was accepted into the prestigious playwriting program at Juilliard in 1997. His first full length play got a month long run at the Greenwich House Theater. Called Skyscraper, it was a comic drama about an attempt to save an historic building from being demolished. Some folks at Manhattan Theater Club saw the show and, impressed by what they'd seen, asked to see Auburn's next work. That turned out to be Proof. After a workshop run at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey, proof opened at MTC's Off Broadway space on May 23, 2000, where it ran for three months before making the move to Broadway's Walter Kerr Theater, where where it officially opened on October 24, 2000. The play, which was directed by Daniel J. Sullivan, starred Mary Louise Parker as Catherine, the daughter of a brilliant but mentally ill mathematician. When a revolutionary mathematical proof is discovered after her dad's death, Catherine is faced with questions about its authorship, her own sanity, and her relationships with her father's former graduate student Hal and her more traditional older sister Claire. The critics went crazy for Proof. It won every award that it possibly could. The Drama Desk Award, the Drama League Award, the Lucille Lortel Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Tony Award, and of course, the Pulitzer Prize. The five members on that year's Pulitzer jury also gave serious consideration to Kenneth Lonergan's the Waverly Gallery and Edward Albee's the Play about the Baby. But they ultimately decided that Proof deserved the award for being, in their words, an artfully constructed play that also gives the audience food for thought. And audiences did indeed love it. Proof ran on Broadway for 917 performances, making it the longest running straight play in this century until it was overtaken by Harry Potter and the Cursed child sometime around 2023. Proof was and remains catnip for good actors. Jennifer Jason Leigh took over the role of Catherine when Mary Louise Parker left in 2001 and Anne Hesch made her Broadway debut in the role the following year. Neil Patrick Harris also made his Broadway debut in the play when he stepped in as how in 2002, productions of Proof proved immensely popular all over the country. There were over 50 professional productions of the play between 2001 and 2004 alone. And over the past 25 years there have been hundreds of productions here and abroad staged by community theater groups, college programs and even high schools. Proof was also made into a film which was released in 2005 with Gwyneth Paltrow as Catherine and Anthony Hopkins as her father. Auburn was hired to do the screenplay. But when he and the director John Madden couldn't agree on exactly how to adapt the play for the screen, Rebecca Miller, the daughter of Arthur Miller, was brought in to finish the script. But Auburn's career continued to thrive. He expanded Jonathan Larson's semi autobiographical solo show Boho Days into the three person musical Tick Tick Boom. And his original plays have included the Columnists about the influential mid century journalist Joseph Alsop, the Adventures of Augie March based on the award winning novel by Saul Bellow and the more domestic dramas Lost late and summer 1976. He has also written movies including the Lake House starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves as Time Cost Lovers and the Girl in the Park, a thriller starring Sigourney Weaver, Kate Bosworth and Kerry Wessel that Auburn not only wrote but also directed. And he also co wrote the 2019 reboot of Charlie's Angels. Now the first Broadway revival of Proof is scheduled to open at the Booth the theater on April 16 with Ayo Etabiri as Catherine and Don Cheadle as her father. So I was very grateful that Auburn was willing to make time to talk with me about both the past and the future of Proof.
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C
Hello David Auburn, welcome to all the drama.
- [11:25]
D
Thank you.
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C
Would you tell us how you first got the news that Proof had won the Pulitzer Prize?
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D
They prepare you a little bit for the possibility. You know, they tell you, the publicity people from the play tell you ahead of time that the prize is being announced on such and such a day and you may want to be available just on the off chance that it happens. So I think I was just at home at the time. I was living in Massachusetts and I got a phone call saying congratulations and I've been talking to my wife on the other line. So I clicked back to her and said, I've won this prize. And so we went out to dinner.
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C
I know it was a long while ago, but could you talk a little bit about what the genesis of was for this play? What made you want to write proof?
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D
I started with the idea that there were two sisters who were fighting over something that a parent left behind. That was the first notion I had. And I also had an idea around the same time about someone who was worried that they might be on the verge of inheriting their parents mental illness, that they were turning 24, 25, coming up on the age when they knew that their parent had begun to have these symptoms and they were fearing that the same thing was going to happen to them. So I didn't know if those two ideas belonged in the same play or if they were different plays. But it was just in playing around with those pieces that I was able to begin what became the play. It turned out they did belong in the same play and, and they complemented one another.
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C
How did the thing that they were arguing over turn out to be something about math? Because I read you were a poli sci major, not a math major.
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D
Yeah, I studied political science and then later on I switched to English. But I knew a lot of mathematicians. I explored a number of different possibilities for this sort of legacy or this, this MacGuffin really that gets discovered in the play. And one of the things that occurred to me was that a mathematical proof might be interesting because its authorship could be called into question in some interesting ways. And it also gave me a link to my idea about this young woman, since a number of famous mathematicians have suffered from that kind of mental instability. All although it's by no means limited to mathematicians. I mean, somebody pointed out to me that many more writers, you know, have those problems. But yeah, and once I thought, okay, it could be a mathematical proof, then I also knew that this was an interesting world of people who were competitive and creative. And there were some interesting kind of cultural features of the world of mathematicians that I thought would be fun to explore in a play.
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C
What kind of research did you do? Because there are like math jokes in the play. I mean, you seem to have really gotten into that world. What kind of research did you do? Did you talk to mathematicians or read books or.
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D
I read a lot. I read a lot of nonfiction. I read the kind of books that are meant for a lay audience, non mathematical audience biographies, and that was enough to write a draft. And then I opened up the process a bit and I sought out mathematicians and had them read it. And had them react to it. Tell me what I was getting wrong, tell me what they thought was plausible, not plausible. And that was a lot of fun. You discover this whole world of people with really interesting responses to the thing that you might not have expected. So I enjoy that kind of journalistic side of the process. And hanging out with the mathematicians was a lot of fun.
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C
I'm going to go back a little bit because you said maybe one of the initial sparks was this rivalry or relationship between two sisters. And I'm wondering why sisters instead of brothers?
- [15:44]
D
I don't know. It's one of those funny things about writing a play. You know, sometimes you have this visual image that gives you a starting point. That image of the woman who was worrying about her mental state. It was a woman. I mean, in my mind, this was a woman sitting outdoors at night, and she's approached by someone who begins talking to her. And if you get something like that, you try not to question it too much. You just sort of pursue it. So these were sisters. I can't give you a better explanation than that.
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B
So they were always. They were always.
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D
If it hadn't worked, then the play wouldn't have been written, and I would have tried something else. But it, you know, it worked.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Obviously, the sisters are Catherine and Claire. Catherine is the sister who's worried about her mental state. Claire is the sister who's worried about her sister in some ways, because Clare's the more conventional sister, the more straight sister. She might have been made out to be a villain, but she isn't in your play. And I. I was interested in how you crafted her.
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D
It's pretty much the same process that you go through when you craft any character. I mean, you're thinking through the situation that they're in from their point of view and trying to inhabit it as realistically and as fully as possible. So I've said this to actors who are playing Claire before. If I had a T shirt for the play, it would say Claire was right. From a practical and really compassionate point of view, everything Claire is doing in the play is right. It makes sense. She's doing it out of a genuine concern for her sister, who she believes is very vulnerable and in real trouble. And she's doing the things that one would do in that situation. So, yeah, so it just is a product of trying to have a character act in a way that's completely justified.
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C
As people who have seen or read the play know, it's set in Chicago, and you spent your college years in Chicago at A very, I think, exciting time for Chicago theater. And I know you went to see a lot of it and I wonder how that experience informed, maybe even still informs your work.
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D
You're right. It was hugely influential on me. I mean, when I got to Chicago, I just felt I was coming from Arkansas. And, you know, there was theater in Arkansas. There is everywhere. There was actually a really vibrant art scene in Little Rock. But Chicago is just on a whole different scale. And I felt like a kid in a candy store. And I went everywhere and stood in line for things at the big theaters. And later sort of finagled a position for myself as the theater reviewer for the college paper so that I could call up theaters and try to get free tickets. And often they were very generous in giving me tickets and letting me review their shows. So I saw a lot and as you say, it was a great time. So I was just exposed to a very wide variety of work in a way that I had never been before. And it was exciting. Particularly the sort of storefront scene in Chicago. I mean, I hadn't really encountered that before. In addition to all the major theaters who were doing great work like the Goodman and Steppenwolf and Romanes and some of the other theaters at the time, there were these storefront groups and they were people who were very seriously engaged in performing and creating theater, but it wasn't their full time job and they were supporting themselves in other ways. Most of them were pretty young. And that gave me a model. I mean, it really provided a model in my mind for how you can begin to create a career in the theater. You don't have to wait for someone else to support you or produce you. That you can start these groups and teach yourself and try to attract an audience and do it alongside all the other things you're trying to do when you're making a living.
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C
You started off writing sketch comedy? That's correct, yes.
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D
Yes.
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C
There are some light moments within Proof, but obviously it. It is a drama. And what made you head more in that direction than writing comedies?
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D
I don't know. I'm not sure I ever really thought of it as a particular departure from other stuff that I had done. I just, I think I do remember that I'd had one play done before, Proof of Profession, one professional production, and it was more of a comedy. And I think my impulse in writing Proof was to focus a bit more on character. I thought maybe I can do more or go deeper into exploration of character in, in this next one than I did in the previous play. Where the people were more, I guess, archetypes or devices or means to an end. So that was what I was going for. And whether or not it was inevitable that that took me in a slightly more serious direction, I'm not sure. But it felt good to me. It felt like the right thing to try to do.
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C
So here it was, your second produced full play, and it was wins the Pulitzer. What kind of effect did that have on your work moving ahead? Obviously, you've written successful plays and screenplays since, but what was the immediate effect? I know for some of your fellow Pulitzer honorees, it created a little bit of a burden of what are people going to expect from me next?
- [21:56]
D
Yeah, there was definitely a bit of that. I mean, I think that's inevitable. And the play has loomed large over my. Over my career. And sometimes it's overshadowed, you know, other things that I really like and I'm proud of. And so I have some mixed feelings about that. But basically my feeling was one of excitement. I think mostly that I thought this gives me a chance to try things, and this gives me a chance to write or at least try to write whatever I want to write. For at least a certain period of time. It felt like someone was sort of cutting the tape and then I could run. So that all felt very positive to me. So, you know, I had a mix of reactions, but overall, I think it was nothing that one could ever, you know, complain about.
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C
No proof was made into a movie. And you worked on the screenplay, but you said, I think publicly that you have some creative differences with the director. And I wondered if you might talk a little bit more about not the difficulty between you and John Madden, but what you would have wanted done differently in the film.
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D
Well, I like John and I have no problems with the movie. We never had difficulty in a personal sense, looking. I wrote a screenplay that I think departed from the play structurally more than. More than he wanted and more than he felt comfortable with. So some of what happened with the movie was that large sections of the play got re. Imported into the screenplay in place of sections where I had done something slightly different or either structurally or in terms of. In terms of how the story was told. I think I was intrigued by the possibility of reinventing the material more, I think, perhaps than John was. And so the final movie is a pretty good record of the play on film in a lot of ways. I think there's maybe another version where it is more of a movie that lives more comfortably as a film. But I'm not unhappy with the movie.
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C
That's interesting that you were the person who wanted to move a little bit away from the play.
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D
That may have just been a product of my own, you know, at that point when the movie was made. I've been living pretty intensely with the play for a couple years, and I may have just sort of gotten tired of it a little bit. And I was. And I was looking for some novelty, so I'm not. I don't just count that as a factor. But, yeah, I was excited by the idea of, like, rethinking the material perhaps a bit more than John was.
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C
This is obviously a play that gets done a good bit. And as you and I are talking, we in New York are looking forward to, I think, what is its first Broadway revival. And I'm wondering, did you do any additional work for this new production?
- [25:09]
D
Well, we haven't started rehearsal yet, so it's, you know, it's possible that there will be a little bit of tinkering, but I. I don't anticipate doing a whole lot, and I don't think it's so useful, especially when as much time has gone by. I mean, it's been 25 years since I wrote the play. So if the play is five years old, you're still probably substantially this kind of the same person or same writer that you were when you did the first version. And it's okay to keep working on it when this much time has passed, I think it would probably not be so helpful. This production does have a black family. The members of the casting point of family are black, and there have been other productions done that way before. A few things land probably now a little differently because of that. So we'll look at that, and I'll be relying on the actors to help me, you know, find the best way to navigate some of that. But it's pretty small stuff. I don't think we'll be doing any major changes.
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C
Well, I know I'm looking forward to it, and I'm sure lots of our listeners are, too. In the meantime, want to thank you for looking back at the creation of the play and your experience with it. Thanks for talking to us.
- [26:27]
D
My pleasure. Thank you,
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B
and thank you for listening. I hope you'll come back next time, and if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please send them to me@janudwayradio.com
- [26:49]
E
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