David Lindsay-Abaire

David Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright, librettist, lyricist, and screenwriter. Born David Abaire in Boston, Massachusetts, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a major in theatre. He then gained a place on the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at New York’s Juilliard School. While there, he studied under playwrights Chrisopher Durang and Marsha Norman. In 2016, he returned to Juilliard as the co-director of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program.

Lindsay-Abaire’s first success was Fuddy Meers, which premiered at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in 1998. His follow-up early plays include A Devil Inside (1997), Snow Angel (1999), Kimberly Akimbo (2000), and Wonder of the World (2001). In 2006, his play Rabbit Hole premiered on Broadway and starred Cynthia Nixon, Ellen Tyne Daly, and John Slattery. The play was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play and won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lindsay-Abaire subsequently adapted Rabbit Hole for film, starring Nicole Kidman in an Oscar-nominated performance. His next play, Good People, premiered on Broadway in 2011 and was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, as well as two Tony nominations.

In addition to his dramatic work, Lindsay-Abaire has also written the book for the musical adaptation of High Fidelity, which had a short Broadway run in December 2006. He then wrote the book and lyrics for Shrek the Musical, which was a huge success and ran for 441 performances on Broadway. Lindsay-Abaire was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and earned the Ed Kleban Award as America’s most promising musical-theatre lyricist.

Lindsay-Abaire is married to his wife, Christine, and they reside in Brooklyn, New York.