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Buffalo Theatre Ensemble
Presents
Good People
By David Lindsay-Abaire
Directed by Connie Canaday Howard
Characters
Margaret
Stevie
Dottie
Jean
Mike
Kate
Setting
South Boston’s Lower End and Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
Time
2011
Synopsis
www.dramatists.com
Welcome to Southie, a Boston neighborhood where a night on the town means a few
rounds of bingo, where this month's paycheck covers last month’s bills, and where
Margie Walsh has just been let go from yet another job. Facing eviction and scrambling
to catch a break, Margie thinks an old fling who's made it out of Southie might be her
ticket to a fresh new start. But is this apparently self-made man secure enough to face his
humble beginnings? Margie is about to risk what little she has left to find out. With his
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February 2-March 5, 2017
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signature humorous glow, Lindsay-Abaire explores the struggles, shifting loyalties and
unshakeable hopes that come with having next to nothing in America.
Director’s Note
David Lindsay-Abaire grew up in Southie, won a scholarship to Milton Academy (a prep
school south of Boston), went to Sarah Lawrence and then Juilliard, has won the Pulitzer
for Rabbit Hole, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (and others’) for Good
People, as well as musicals (ie Shrek the Musical), and films. He lives in Brooklyn, but is
very fond and proud of his background. And he has become a major contemporary voice
in our world, and a favorite of BTE, having produced Fuddy Meers and Rabbit Hole,
previously.
In reference to writing Good People, he’s said “… if I write about Southie, in any way,
class will inevitably bubble up to the surface…”, but notes it wasn’t his intention to do
that. Instead, “I wanted to write about the people that I knew. I didn’t know many
criminals. I didn’t know many drug addicts. But I knew people who were just struggling
to get by.”
This play is about several topics – all very valid and pertinent for our times. Perhaps most
thought provoking is the idea of the struggle to be a good person, and, beyond niceties,
what does that really mean? It is not an easy pursuit; it takes dedication, strength and
even courage, at times, and is sometimes a lonely or even frightening journey.
In this play, every character is complex and struggles with relationships with others, as
well as with trying to protect those they love and themselves; are they good people? It is
because of their interactions with one another, that they must examine their values and
beliefs, and consider those of each other. Human resilience and flexibility are exemplified
and celebrated, really strong traits for our contemporary world. CCH
Production History
Good People premiered in 2011 at Manhattan Theatre Club, and was nominated for two
Tony awards: Best Play and Best Leading Actress in a Play (Frances McDormand).
McDormand won the Tony.
Since that time, it has been produced widely.
Background on David Lindsay-Abaire
"David Lindsay-Abaire." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2015. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 24 Aug. 2016.
David Lindsay-Abaire
Born:November 14, 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Nationality:American
Occupation:Playwright
Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2015. From Literature Resource Center.
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February 2-March 5, 2017
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Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2016 Gale, Cengage Learning
Updated:June 18, 2015
Table of Contents:
 Awards
 Career
 Further Readings About the Author
 Media Adaptations
 Personal Information
 Sidelights
 Writings by the Author
PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Born November 14, 1969, in Boston, MA; married Christine Lindsay (an actress);
children: Nicholas and one other child. Education: Sarah Lawrence College, B.A., 1992;
completed the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at the Juilliard
School, 1998. Memberships: Writers' Guild of America, Dramatists Guild Council.
Addresses: Home: Brooklyn, NY.
CAREER:
Playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, and librettist. Twentieth Century-Fox, Los Angeles,
CA, screenwriter. Previously worked in a circuit-board factory.
AWARDS:
Pulitzer Prize for drama and Spirit of America Award, both 2007, both for Rabbit Hole;
New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, Horton Foote Prize, Edgerton
Foundation New American Play Award, all for GoodPeople; Ed Kleban Award, 2008,
for Shrek the Musical.
WORKS:
WRITINGS:
 A Devil Inside, Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 2000.
 Fuddy Meers, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2001.
 Wonder of the World, Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2002, Dramatists Play
Service (New York, NY), 2003.
 How We Talk in South Boston: A Short Comedy, Playscripts (New York, NY),
2003.
 Kimberly Akimbo, Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 2003, Overlook
Press (Woodstock, NY), 2004.
 Snow Angel: A Play, Playscripts (New York, NY), 2003.
 Rabbit Hole, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 2006, Dramatists
Play Service (New York, NY), 2006.
 Three One-acts: Crazy Eights, Baby Food, and That Other Person, Dramatists
Play Service Inc. (New York, NY), 2006.
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 High Fidelity: A Musical (sound recording), music by Tom Kitt, lyrics by
Amanda Green, based on the novel by Nick Hornby, Ghostlight (New York,
NY), 2007.
 Inkheart: Farid's Story, adapted by Gail Herman, based on the novel by Cornelia
Funke, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2008.
 (Author of screenplay) Inkheart, directed by Iain Softley, produced by Softley,
Diana Pokorny, and Cornelia Funke, Warner Bros. Pictures (Los Angeles, CA),
2009.
 Inkheart: Movie Novelization, adapted by Jane Mason and Sarah Hines-Stephens,
Scholastic (New York, NY), 2009.
 Inkheart: Movie Storybook, adapted by Sonia Sander, Scholastic (New York,
NY), 2009.
 Shrek the Musical (sound recording), Decca Broadway (New York, NY), 2009.
 (Lyricist) Shrek the Musical: Vocal Selections (sound recording), music by
Jeanine Tesori, piano/vocal arrangements by John Nicholas, Cherry Lane Music
Company (New York, NY), 2009.
 Good People, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 2011,
Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 2012.
 (Screenwriter, with Mitchell Kapner) Oz the Great and Powerful, adapted by
Elizabeth Rudnick, based on the books of L. Frank Baum, Disney Press (New
York, NY), 2013.
 The Land of Oz, adapted by Scott Peterson and Michael Siglain, Disney Press
(New York, NY), 2013.
Author of other plays, including The L'il Plays, and Dotting and Dashing. Also,
screenwriter for the 2005 film,Robots.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS:
A film adaptation of Rabbit Hole was released in 2010.
Sidelights
David Lindsay-Abaire is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He has also written
screenplays for films, as well as librettos and song lyrics. In 2007, he won a Pulitzer Prize
for Drama for his play, Rabbit Hole.
His play, Fuddy Meers, tells the story of Claire, a mother who has suffered a stroke and is
experiencing memory loss. Lindsay-Abaire told a contributor to American Theatre: "I
didn't go into the writing with any sort of agenda. I knew I wanted a play about a bunch
of people who were trying to forget who they were and what they'd done, plus one person
who needed to remember all those things. The fact that the play's set in a dysfunctional
family seems appropriate, [but] it wasn't something I was commenting on."
Long Island Business critic Richard Scholem called Fuddy Meers "Lindsay-Abaire's
clever, bizarre off-Broadway comic masterpiece." Scholem added: "In between all the
zany, goofy antics are people and situations we recognize. They are exaggerated here, but
they are real as well and that's scary as well as funny," Karl Levett, writing in Back Stage
described Lindsay-Abaire as "a new and original theatrical voice." New York Times
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writer, Ben Brantley called the play a "dark, sweet, and thoroughly engaging new
comedy."
Cass, the main character in Lindsay-Abaire's Wonder of the World, runs away from her
boring life and lands in Niagara Falls. There, she encounters various quirky characters,
some of whom share connecting experiences.
Booklist writer Jack Helbig described Lindsay-Abaire as "capable of writing precise,
graceful, and economical lines that come to life." "The play is extremely funny. LindsayAbaire's flair for the absurd combines nicely with an ability to pull laughs out of any
situation," asserted Paul Harris in Variety.
Describing his inspiration for the play, Kimberly Akimbo, to Back Stage West writer,
David Sheward, Lindsay-Abaire stated: "The idea of the play came to me in a flash. A
friend of mine was describing his new baby and he said: 'She's two months old going on
eighty.' I'm so literal-minded I go there. I immediately got this image of a young girl
trapped in an old woman's body. Then I did research on this sad and rare condition. ... I
had no desire to write about the actual disease. It's not a disease play. It's a parable about
mortality, children, and teen angst."
In the play, the titular Kimberly struggles with how the disease affects her life and
relationships. Brantley, writing in the New York Times, remarked: "Kimberly Akimbo is at
once a shrewd satire, a black comedy and a heartbreaking study of how time wounds
everyone."
A man and wife deal with the death of their young son in Rabbit Hole. Lindsay-Abaire
described his motivation for writing Rabbit Hole in an interview with New York Times
contributor Charles McGrath, stating: "I wanted to see if I could write a naturalistic play.
... I've been pretty well treated by the critics, but the critics who didn't like my comedies
hated them with an unbridled passion, and then I would see these same people writing
very respectfully about ordinary naturalistic plays. So a bitter, angry part of me was
saying I could write one of those damn plays if I wanted to." The play won the Pulitzer
Prize and other awards and was adapted for a 2010 film starring Nicole Kidman.
New Republic critic Robert Brustein compared the work to Lindsay-Abaire's previous
efforts, stating: "Rabbit Holeis much more deeply felt than this playwright's earlier
whimsies and, through most of its length, more powerfully written." Daily Variety writer,
David Rooney, described the work as "an uncommonly affecting and absorbing play--and
a significant breakthrough for Lindsay-Abaire."
Good People follows the fates of members of a close-knit community in South Boston.
Regarding the inspiration behind the play, Lindsay-Abaire told World Socialist Web site
writer Richard Adams: "I kept hearing over and over again about British playwrights
writing about class in their country, and people were asking, where are the new American
plays about class? And I asked myself, if I were to write a play on the subject, what
would that be? I knew I wasn't interested in writing any didactic, message-laden play, so I
put it aside for a while. Then I went back to the idea of Southie and thought, wait a
minute, if I write about Southie in any way, class will inevitably bubble up to the
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surface." In an interview with Christopher Wallenberg, contributor to the Boston Globe
Web site, Lindsay-Abaire stated: "I wanted to write about the people that I knew. I didn't
know many criminals. I didn't know many drug addicts. But I knew people who were just
struggling to get by. ... And I thought, you don't see those people on a Broadway stage
very often."
David Rooney, contributor to the Hollywood Reporter, suggested: "The play attaches
faces and voices to the accounts of working-class American struggles that fill op-ed
pages these days. ... It's a thoughtful examination of hard-luck resentment, survivor guilt
and the complex question of opportunity." "Good People may not always defy our
assumptions as robustly as Kate does Margie's. But it's too thoughtful, moving and richly
entertaining to be missed," opined Elysa Gardner in USA Today.
Interview with David Lindsay Abaire
McGRATH, CHARLES. "A Return to Southie, by Way of Broadway." New York Times,
Late Edition (East Coast) ed.Feb 06 2011. ProQuest. Web. 24 Aug. 2016 .
Return To Southie, By Way of Broadway: [Arts and Leisure Desk]
THE playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for "Rabbit
Hole," grew up in South Boston -- Southie, as it's known. Southie, the setting of his much
anticipated Broadway follow-up, “Good People,” is a neighborhood of narrow streets and
small houses jammed together on a peninsula jutting into Boston Harbor and cut off from
downtown by an old shipping channel. Even to some Bostonians, growing up here is a
little like growing up on the moon. They know the place mostly from gritty movies set
there, like "Good Will Hunting" and "The Departed."
Until fairly recently, when gentrifiers began slipping in, the neighborhood was Irish,
Catholic and working class, and famously proud, insular, stubborn and independent.
Southie was the home of the mobster Whitey Bulger, a local hero to many. In the mid'70s it was a bastion of anti-busing sentiment -- not, many residents insisted, because
people in Southie had anything against blacks but because they didn't care for outsiders,
period. And the place has always been known for the local brand of dark humor, which
thrives on misery and adversity.
While not autobiographical, “Good People” is the first of Mr. Lindsay-Abaire's plays to
explore the world he came from, and it features a character who, like him, moves away
and becomes a success. Now 41, he lives in the Ditmas Park section of Brooklyn with his
wife and two children. But on a bitterly cold day a couple of weeks ago, when the
shipping channel was nearly frozen solid and residents had staked out their carefully
shoveled parking spots with traffic cones and lawn chairs, he dropped by the old
neighborhood for the first time in a while, to wander around and to talk about the play,
which stars Frances McDormand, Tate Donovan and Estelle Parsons. It begins previews
on Tuesday at the Friedman Theater.
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Mr. Lindsay-Abaire is a small, chunky man who seems unusually at home in his own
skin and seldom stops smiling. He strolled around Southie, pointing out landmarks, as if
pleased to discover that the place was still there. He stopped by his old house on West
Fifth Street and explained that his mother had been born there. When he was a boy, she
worked in an electronics factory, making circuit boards, while his father, also a Southie
native, sold fruit from the back of a truck.
He was just David Abaire back then (he picked up the extra name when he married the
actress Chris Lindsay in 1994) and spent nearly every afternoon at the local Boys Club
(later a Boys and Girls Club) a few blocks away. Jennifer Gordon, a friend who still lives
in the old neighborhood, recalled: " David was a smart kid right from the get-go. The rest
of us would go there to goof off, but he was always there doing his homework. You knew
that this kid was going somewhere."
She added that at Harvard Law School, where she works, someone will every now and
then give a surprised look upon learning that she's from Southie. "I tell them, I grew up
next door to a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, so back off," she said. "I love being
able to say that."
Pattie McCormick and Anne Gordon (no relation to Jennifer), two staff members from
Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s time, still work at the club, and they greeted him warmly but
deferentially, as if he were a visiting prelate, before showing him around, pointing out
what had changed (new gym, new computers, new guinea pigs to replace the ones that
had passed on) and what hadn't (the basement swimming pool, the weird upstairs room
planked with logs so that it looks like the inside of a log cabin).
"When I was a kid, I thought this was the best place in the world," he said, beaming and
shaking his head, "and now it seems even better to me."
Ms. McCormick and Anne Gordon (who still has a folder of poems and stories that Mr.
Lindsay-Abaire wrote for the club newspaper when he was 10 or 11) engineered an early
break by helping him win a scholarship to Milton Academy, the prep school south of
Boston, awarded by the Boston Boys and Girls Clubs every six years. The scholarship
had typically gone to an athlete, Ms. Gordon explained, and though Mr.Lindsay-Abaire
didn't know it at the time, she and Ms. McCormick lobbied hard for an exception to be
made in his case.
"He was special," Ms. Gordon said. "We knew it even then."
It was at Milton that Mr. Lindsay-Abaire began acting and writing plays, and indirectly
the school also helped inspire his new play. “Good People” is about social class, a subject
that American theater for some reason seems to explore much less often than race. It's the
story of Margaret Walsh, a jobless, smart-mouthed single mother from Southie, who
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barges into the life and home of an old high school boyfriend who escaped from the
neighborhood, became a doctor and now lives in the swanky suburb of Chestnut Hill.
"Class is something I know about," Mr. Lindsay-Abaire said. "I've lived it every day of
my life, and it shaped me in my identity."
He recalled that on school vacations he would go home and watch TV for a week while
seemingly everyone else at Milton went off somewhere and came back with a tan.
Debbie Simon, who teaches English and public speaking at Milton and was Mr. LindsayAbaire’s coach on the speech team, said recently: "I'm sure it was foreign to him at first,
but he adapted and was embraced by the school in less than a minute. He was remarkable
right from the beginning. He wrote a play for his 10th-grade class to put on. That was
unheard of at Milton then.
"He was the kind of kid who was always saying: 'Well, how about if we do this? What do
you think?' His enthusiasm was contagious. This was all a while back, but I remember it
as if it were yesterday."
Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s cheerful good nature and seeming lack of class anxiety doubtless
owe something to his charmed career. He has had five plays produced, all by the
Manhattan Theater Club, where he is now a cherished regular on the order of Terrence
McNally or John Patrick Shanley. He wrote the book for the musical "High Fidelity" and
the book and lyrics for "Shrek the Musical"; he wrote the screenplays for "Inkheart,"
"Robots" and the movie version of "Rabbit Hole," currently in theaters, and is working
now with Sam Raimi (director of the "Spider-Man" movies) on a film prequel to "The
Wizard of Oz."
But people who know Mr. Lindsay-Abaire also remark all the time about how kind he is.
"He has a personal generosity in him that also pervades his work," said Daniel Sullivan,
the director of “Good People” and the stage version of "Rabbit Hole." "There aren't bad
people in this play. He has such affection for the world he grew up in, and he sees every
point of view."
Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s early work is often compared to Christopher Durang's, not
inappropriately, even if his plays aren't as angry or scabrous. The first play he ever acted
in was Mr. Durang's "History of the American Film," and Mr. Durang and the playwright
Marsha Norman taught Mr. Lindsay-Abaire at Juilliard, where he went after graduating
from Sarah Lawrence. You can see the Durang influence, as well as a Southie streak, in
the way Mr. Lindsay-Abaire combines whimsy, farce and black comedy. "Fuddy Meers,"
his first play, was about an amnesiac whose memory is erased every time she goes to
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sleep. "Kimberly Akimbo," his third, was about a teenage girl with a progeria-like disease
that causes her to age and waste away.
"Rabbit Hole," on other hand, about a married couple grieving over the death of their
young son, is written in the style of old-fashioned realism. Tate Donovan, who plays the
doctor in “Good People,” also appeared in a Los Angeles production of "Rabbit Hole"
and recalled recently that when he read the script, he said to himself: "Is this the same
dude who wrote 'Fuddy Meers'? No way."
"Rabbit Hole" was a conscious departure, according Mr. Lindsay-Abaire.
"I wanted to see if I could write a naturalistic play," he said. "I've been pretty well treated
by the critics, but the critics who didn't like my comedies hated them with an unbridled
passion, and then I would see these same people writing very respectfully about ordinary
naturalistic plays. So a bitter, angry part of me was saying I could write one of those
damn plays if I wanted to."
The idea for "Rabbit Hole" didn't come to him until years later, however, when, himself
the father of a young son, he began hearing stories about parents who had lost children.
"I remembered something Marsha Norman said at Juilliard," he said. "She said, if you
want to write a good play, write about the thing that frightens you the most."
Mr. Lindsay-Abaire hasn't ruled out returning to his old mode, and even has an absurdist
play in mind. But “Good People” had to be done in realistic style, he went on, because he
didn't want to make his characters ridiculous.
"I don't want to be didactic about class," he said. "I thought, Let me write about the
people I know and love and class will bubble up inevitably."
Comparing himself to Mike, the doctor character in “Good People,” who is ambivalent
about his Southie origins, proud of them in a way but also dismissive of those who didn't
get an education and move out, he said: "I'm a lot less conflicted. I've worked really hard,
but I know people who have worked even harder but didn't have the chances I've had.
"We have this myth that if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. It's not a very
American thing to say, but I don't think that's true. It's true for a lot of people, but you
need other things to succeed. You need luck, you need opportunity, and you need the life
skills to recognize what an opportunity is."
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Things to think about prior to performance:
 In life, as well as in art, a recurrent question is how environment and
education/opportunity affect an individual. What are your thoughts?
 Another popular cultural question is how a person’s individual needs affects
relationships. What are your thoughts?
 David Lindsay-Abaire in reference to Good People has said ““There’s this myth in
America that we can all accomplish anything if we just work hard enough. Is that
really true? Or are there, in fact, people who are born in circumstances that they
really cannot escape? Yes, hard work matters. But what role does luck play in
whatever successes they might find?” What are your thoughts?
 The playwright has said that all of his works are about people finding themselves
in a world that has turned upside-down, and trying to find a way to move forward.
How is this seen in this script?
Things to watch for in performance:
 How do the design elements facilitate the action of the play (set, props, costumes,
sound, lighting)?
 Note what the context and conflict are in each scene. Why are some moments
staged with people alone on stage, some staged as a two- or three-person scene, and
others staged in a larger group? What is Lindsay-Abaire attempting to say or show
by writing the scenes in this way?
 Notice how often characters in this play tell stories, about their individual or shared
pasts. Why and when do they do this? Is there a pattern?
 How do characters change throughout the show?
Things to think about after the performance:
 By societal or moral standards, who is a “good person” in this script?
 Why do you think Margie does not ultimately pursue the paternity issue? Do you
agree with her decision?
 How have both Kate and Margie made sacrifices for their daughters?
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 We are only allowed to see six people in this play. Why do you think the
playwright included these six people?
Other Analysis “Tools”:
 What happens in the very last moments of the play? Certainly, the last few
minutes, but, more importantly, the last thirty seconds? In that time, what
happens or is said, and what does that say about what the play is ‘about?’ In a
nutshell, how do the writers drive their point(s) home?
 And what is the significance of the title? Why did the writer decide that this was
the most quintessential title for his work, do you think?
The running time for this production is approximately two hours and twenty minutes,
with one fifteen minute intermission.
Please join us for a pre-show discussion Thursday, February 2nd at 6:45 – 7:15 pm
preceding the preview performance. Note that pre-show discussions will include the
director and designers, and will be a discussion of the approach to this production.
There will be a post-show discussion following the Friday, February 10th performance.
The post-show will be with director, cast and crew, and will be fielding questions from
the audience.
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