Personal Life
Robert Patrick was born to migrant workers in Texas. Because his parents moved around the southwest constantly, looking for work, he never went to one school for an entire year until his senior year of high school in Roswell, New Mexico. The only cultural constants in his life were books, movies, and radio. His mother made sure he learned to read, and arranged that he start school a year early. Unsocialized due to constant displacement, he always made poor grades, and dropped out of college after two years. Having experienced no live theatre but a few school shows, he fell in love with stage work while washing dishes at the Kennebunkport Playhouse one summer. Stopping off in New York on his way back to Roswell, he stumbled into the Caffe Cino, the first underground or Off-Off Broadway theatre, on September 14, 1961. He remained there working for free in any required capacity, supporting himself with temporary typing jobs while observing and participating in the production of dozens of plays. Having long been a poet, in 1964 he got an idea for a play, "The Haunted Host," and because of the casualness of the Cino, was allowed to mount it almost at once. It was something of a success, and playwrighting became his main focus.
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