Robert Patrick

Playwright

This Robert Patrick should not be confused with the actor of the same name.

According to Samuel French inc. (publisher of plays) "New York's most-produced playwright of the 1960's." He has over fifty plays in print and won many prizes.

He wrote in his play JUDAS, "There are no gods, Judas, no ghosts. The only consciousness in the universe is the men and women who are alive right now. When all gods are one, men must see that they never needed gods." In a lighter tone, in his play T-SHIRTS, one character says, "God! Why do I never get what I want?" and another answers him, "Possibly because you keep asking God for it and he doesn't exist." In HELLO, BOB, a woman tells a friend, "Why I went to Ireland God knows, and there is no God."

Bio follows:

ROBERT PATRICK (Born Kilgore, Texas, September 27, 1937), a pioneer in Off-Off Broadway and gay theatre, has published over 60 plays. His first, The Haunted Host, premiered at the legendary Caffe Cino in 1964 and has opened gay theatres from Toronto to Sydney. Samuel French called Patrick "New York's most-produced playwright of the 1960's," climaxing in the 1969 "Show Business" Award for Joyce Dynel, Salvation Army, and Fog, as well as Rockefeller and N.Y.S.C.A.P. grants.

His directors include Marshall Mason, Lanford Wilson, Clive Donner, and Norman Rene. Marge Champion starred on PBS in his Camera Obscura. The Haunted Host introduced Harvey Fierstein, who recorded Patrick's Pouf Positive and toured Europe with it. The international success of Kennedy's Children won the Glasgow Citizens World Playwrighting Award and productions with Shelley Winters, Sally Kirkland, Kelsey Grammer, Julie Kavner, Julie Hagerty, and Anne Wedgewood. Shirley Knight won a "Tony" in it on Broadway and starred in it on CBS Cable with Jane Alexander, Lindsay Crouse, and Brad Dourif.

In 1974 he contributed three plays in the U.K.'s first season of gay theatre, "Homosexual Acts." From 1975 he promoted high-school theatre for the International Thespians Society, receiving their 1980 Founders Award "for services to theatre and to youth." He wrote their playwrighting textbook, Tools, Not Rules. From 1979 to 1982 he wrote the only column about Off-Off Broadway, "State of the Art," for the paper, "Other Stages." In 1983 and 1986, two consecutive Manhattan Borough Presidents declared Blue Is For Boys weekends in Manhattan (an unprecedented honor) in recognition of the first play about gay teenagers.

In 1988 he published Untold Decades, a comic history of American gay male life. The Trial Of Socrates was the first gay play produced by the city of New York. Judas, with Kelly McGillis and Mark Harelik, was the first original play mounted by the Pacific Conservatory Of The Performing Arts. The Last Stroke won the "Pick of the Fringe" Award at the Edinburgh Festival.

In 1994 he published Temple Slave, a novel about the origins of Off-Off Broadway, which has gone into a second printing and been optioned for film. In 1996, he published Michelangelo's Models, Bread Alone, The Trial Of Socrates, and Evan On Earth. In 1997, he received the Robert Chesley Award for Lifetime Achievement In Gay Theatre.

The Denver Center Theatre Company commissioned Patrick to write book and score for a full-length musical, All At Sea He has written for TV's "Ghost Story," "High Tide," and "Robin's Hoods," and ghosted many TV- and screen-plays. Marlo Thomas commissioned My Cup Ranneth Over for herself and Lily Tomlin. Five anthologies feature his short stories. He published many comic poems about theatre in "Playbill" Magazine, and erotic ones in "FirstHand" Magazine. Mister Patrick appears in the films "Resident Alien," with Quentin Crisp, "O Is For Orgy: The Sequel," and "The O-Boys: Porn, Parties, and Politics." He has just completed a book of autobiographical film criticism, "Narcissus in the Dark."

His website is http://hometown.aol.com/rbrtptrck