Jon Robin Baitz
| Jon Robin Baitz | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 4, 1961 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter, television producer, actor |
| Partner(s) | Joe Mantello (1990–2002) |
Jon Robin Baitz (born November 4, 1961) is an American playwright, screenwriter, television producer, and occasional actor. Baitz is currently a professor at Stony Brook Southampton and The New School where he is Artistic Director of the BFA theatre program.
Baitz was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, the son of Edward Baitz, an executive of the Carnation Company. Baitz was raised in Brazil and South Africa before the family returned to California, where he attended Beverly Hills High School. On speaking about the influence of his time growing up abroad on his life and work, Baitz states:
I think what happened was that I felt so foreign so often that I became very adept at observing. I learned a kind of short hand. Because you’re a foreigner, an alien really, you have to decode all of the customs and the manners, not just the language. So you begin to feel terribly detached which is not a good thing. And it had that effect upon my writing initially. You start this little dialogue with yourself about what things mean and then suddenly you’re 20-something-years-old and you’re continuing that dialogue on paper.
After graduation from high school, Baitz did not attend college, instead he worked as a bookstore clerk and assistant to two producers, and the experiences became the basis for his first play, a one-acter entitled Mizlansky/Zilinsky. He drew on his own background for his first two-act play, The Film Society, about the staff of a prep school in South Africa. Its 1987 success in Los Angeles led to an Off-Broadway production with Nathan Lane in 1988, which earned him a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding New Play.
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