Six Degrees of Separation (Author Biography)

Author Biography

John Guare was born on February 5, 1938, in New York. At age eleven, along with another boy, he produced his first play in a garage for an audience of family and friends. He also called up several magazines and newspapers to promote the play. Newsday sent a photographer, and the paper ran pictures of the production in July 1949.

As a teenager, Guare attended the theater regularly and listened to cast recordings of musicals. He attended Georgetown University and graduated in 1960. Three years later, he received his M.F.A. from Yale Drama School. Guare expressed dissatisfaction with this course of study, however, claiming that he learned more about plays while at Yale from a design course than from his playwriting course.

After finishing school, Guare wrote several one-act plays and worked as a reader for a London publishing house. In 1965, he began hitchhiking through Europe. His visit to Rome inspired one of his most important plays, The House of Blue Leaves, which shows his vision of modern America.

When Guare returned to the United States, some of his plays were produced off-off-Broadway. He eventually was invited to become a founding member of the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theatre Playwrights’ Conference, and that is where the first act of The House of Blue Leaves had a staged reading in 1966. After working on nine revisions of the second act, Guare concluded that he still lacked the skill to complete a full-length play. Instead, he concentrated on writing more one-act plays, some of which were produced at the O’Neill as well as off-Broadway.

Guare’s early plays raise several themes that would continue to interest the author throughout his career. The Loveliest Afternoon of the Year (1966) and Muzeeka (1967) both rely on a character’s act of violence to avoid life’s dreary existence. Guare has also attacked the role of the media in several of his plays. He eventually completed The House of Blue Leaves, and he staged it in 1971.

Over the next decade, Guare continued to produce his work, which included a rock musical adaptation of a Shakespeare play, a science fiction comedy, and a murder mystery. Six Degrees of Separation opened in New York City in 1990. It was an immediate critical and popular success. It was made into a movie several years later and Guare wrote the screenplay.

Guare has won many awards over the years. His screenplay for Atlantic City, directed by Louis Malle, garnered an Academy Award nomination. He has been a longtime member of the Dramatists Guild and was elected in 1989 to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.