Neil LaBute; American Playwright

I am sitting here reading for my Intro to Theatre class when I happened upon a Playwright by the name of Neil LaBute. He caught my attention simply because of the intricate and devastating stories he comes up with. His themes are so dark that his wife left him, and his children have been estranged from him. He has been labeled a misogynist and a misanthropist by his colleagues and various critics, but that does not stop him from continuing his work. His stories are not about himself, or events or people that he has taken from his own life, but they are creations from his deranged and fucked up imagination. "In the Shape of Things" follows an attractive woman who makes a nerdy museum security guard fall in love with her, only to reveal it was just for an art project. In a series of three one-act monologues, “Bash: Latter-Day Plays,” in which Mormon characters are portrayed as murderers, the church “disfellowshiped” him, essentially putting him into a state of limbo from which he can never quite return. Not to mention the one about a man who makes a deaf woman fall in love with him only so he can reject her later for the pure fun of it. Though he may seem like a cruel man, nothing is known about the personal aspects of LaBute's life by anyone other than himself, not even the actors he has known for years question his private affairs, so he remains something of an enigma to the public eye and I think he likes it that way. LaBute’s anger appears to be directed at humanity, as if, collectively, mankind had done him a great hurt and he is paying it back, bit by bit. But, who could blame him? I think I have found the Jhonen Vasquez of the Theatre, and I plan to keep a close eye on him.