Ronald Ribman

• Name — Ronald Ribman • Born — 28 May 1932 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Died — 15 May 2025 • Place of death — Dallas, Texas, U.S. • Occupation — Poet, playwright, author • Period — 20th and 21st centuries • Genre — Plays • Notable Works — The Poison Tree, Cold Storage, The Journey of the Fifth Horse • Spouse — Alice Rosen • Children — James and Elana • Awards — Obie Award, Emmy Nomination, Hull-Warriner Award, Rockefeller Foundation Fellow • Website — http: ronaldribman.com

Ribman was born in Sydenham Hospital in New York City to Samuel M. Ribman, a lawyer, and Rosa (Lerner) Ribman. He attended public school in Brooklyn, and graduated P.S. 188 in 1944. Ribman attended Mark Twain Jr. High School, graduating in 1947, and Abraham Lincoln H.S., graduating in 1950. Ribman is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1954, his master's degree in 1958, and his PhD in 1962. In August 1967, he married Alice Rosen, a registered nurse. The Ribmans have two children, James and Elana. Ribman served in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956. Following his military service, Ribman worked as a coal broker for the J.E. Ribman Coal Co of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from 1956 to 1957. Ribman was an assistant professor of English Literature at Otterbein College from 1962 to 1963, and left academia to focus on his plays in 1964. He died at a hospital in Dallas, Texas on May 15, 2025, at the age of 92.

• Infinite Absence, 1st Edition 2016; 2nd Edition,2021

• Harry, Noon and Night, The American Place Theatre, 1965. (Subsequently produced off-Broadway at The Pocket Theater) • The Journey of the Fifth Horse, The American Place Theatre, 1966. • The Ceremony of Innocence, The American Place Theatre, 1967. • Passing Through From Exotic Places, Sheridan Square Playhouse, 1969. • Fingernails Blue As Flowers, The American Place Theatre, 1971. • A Break in the Skin, Yale Repertory Company, 1972. (Subsequently produced at The Actors Studio, 1972.) • The Poison Tree, The Playhouse in the Park, Philadelphia, PA. and Westport Playhouse, CT, 1973. (Subsequently revised and produced on Broadway at the Ambassador Theater, 1976.) • Cold Storage, The American Place Theatre, 1977. (Subsequently produced on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater, 1977.) • Buck, Playwrights Horizons/ The American Place Theatre, 1983. • Sweet Table at the Richelieu, The American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA., 1987. • The Cannibal Masque, The American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, MA., 1987. • A Serpent's Egg, The American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, MA., 1987. • The Rug Merchants of Chaos, Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena, CA., 1991. • Dream of the Red Spider, The American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, MA., 1993.

• The Journey of the Fifth Horse, National Educational Television, 1966. • The Final War of Olly Winter, CBS Playhouse, 1967. • The Most Beautiful Fish, PBS, 1969; published in The New York Times, November 23, 1969. • The Angel Levine (with Bill Gunn, based on a short story by Bernard Malamud), United Artists, 1969. • The Ceremony of Innocence, NET Playhouse, 1970; subsequently adapted by Granada Television in 1974. • Cold Storage, A&E Network, 1984. • Seize the Day (based on the novella by Saul Bellow), PBS Playhouse, 1987. • The Sunset Gang series (based on the stories of Warren Adler, including Yiddish, The Detective, and Home), PBS, 1991.

After the American Repertory Theater's world premiere of Ribman's Sweet Table at the Richelieu, Jonathan Marks identified a central theme in Ribman's work as having "a preoccupation with the persistence of the past in the present—a recognition that we all carry with us a heavy baggage of seeds, each of which began sprouting at a different time in the past, and never stopped shooting out tendrils: a bag of memories which can never be simply dumped."

Ribman's poetry first appeared in literary magazines as The Beloit Poetry Journal and The Colorado Quarterly. Ribman's first commercial publication was an article, co-authored with his father, in the April 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine, titled "The Poor Man in the Scales," a study of the problems faced by indigent defendants in the federal courts. Ribman's most famous early play, The Journey of the Fifth Horse based on Ivan Turgenev's short story "The Diary of a Superfluous Man," won an Obie Award and starred Dustin Hoffman in the role of Zoditch.

* * * * * * * • Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 7, Gale, 1977. ·Starr, Bernard (August 4, 2016) "Famed Playwright Switches Genres. Interview With Ronald Ribman About His New Novel, Infinite Absence" Huffington Post.