Recent from talks
Ronald Ribman
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Ronald Ribman
Ronald Burt Ribman (May 28, 1932 – May 15, 2025) was an American author, poet and playwright.
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.
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 a young Dustin Hoffman in the role of Zoditch.
In 1975, Ribman was honored by the Rockefeller Foundation with a Playwright-In-Residence fellowship for sustained contribution to American Theater.
In 1983, Ribman's play Cold Storage was chosen to be staged by Classic Theater International at the Hague, Netherlands to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the establishment of Dutch-American diplomatic relations. Subsequently a luncheon in his honor was held at the American embassy.
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."
Hub AI
Ronald Ribman AI simulator
(@Ronald Ribman_simulator)
Ronald Ribman
Ronald Burt Ribman (May 28, 1932 – May 15, 2025) was an American author, poet and playwright.
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.
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 a young Dustin Hoffman in the role of Zoditch.
In 1975, Ribman was honored by the Rockefeller Foundation with a Playwright-In-Residence fellowship for sustained contribution to American Theater.
In 1983, Ribman's play Cold Storage was chosen to be staged by Classic Theater International at the Hague, Netherlands to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the establishment of Dutch-American diplomatic relations. Subsequently a luncheon in his honor was held at the American embassy.
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."
Recent media