David Ives
| David Ives | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 11, 1950 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter, author |
| Alma mater | Northwestern University |
| Period | 1972–present |
| Spouse | Martha Ives |
David Ives (born July 11, 1950) is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is best known for writing comic one-act plays, a reputation which resulted in the New York Times referring to him as the "maestro of the short form". Ives has also written dramatic plays, narrative stories, and screenplays.
Ives grew up in a neighborhood that was home to a variety of cultures and creatures. He wrote his first play when he was nine years old. Ives attended high school at a boys Catholic seminary. It was a strict school, with a challenging course of study. “We would-be priests” Ives has written, “were groomed for gravitas.” The school had a tradition that played a significant role in opening his eyes to theatre: at the end of the year the seniors could be a part of a school show called “The Senior Mock,” in which the students satirized the teachers. All the teachers attended, and the student body attended in a spirit of great excitement. Ives himself played the role of “the chain-smoking English teacher who coached the track team (while smoking)”. He also wrote a song that mocked another teacher, and sang it for the audience of six hundred. This minor but exciting school event inspired David Ives. It was another performance of a high school satire, in a previous century, that similarly inspired playwright Alfred Jarry to write his play, Ubu Roi. A second event that same year was significant in the same direction — Ives saw a production of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, an experience that so impressed him that the world lost a priest.
Ives attended Northwestern University, majoring in English. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971. He traveled to Germany, where he taught English for a year. In 1972 he was drawn to California, by the prospect of having his play, Canvas, produced at a theatre in Los Angeles. When Circle Repertory Theatre in New York City determined to mount a production of Canvas, Ives moved to New York City. He found employment there working for William P. Bundy, the editor at Foreign Affairs magazine. When a position as editor opened up at the magazine, it was offered to Ives. Ives continued to write plays, including a trilogy of three full-length plays; part one is, St. Freud (1975), in which, rather than merely theorizing about the Oedipal desire of a young man to murder his father, Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, actually does it. Freud then convinces everyone that the act was all in their minds. Part two of the trilogy, The Lives and Deaths of the Great Harry Houdini, imagines Houdini as a serial killer. In part three, City of God, an entire town is struck with amnesia. In 1983 Ives was playwright-in-residence at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts where The Lives and Deaths of the Great Harry Houdini was produced. Ives graduated from the Yale School of Drama with a Master of Fine Arts in 1984.
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