Jack Gelber was one of the leading voices of a movement in American playwriting in the 1960s that challenged the commercialism of Broadway and attempted to fill the literary void left by the fading careers of figures such as Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and William Inge. Remembered primarily for the Living Theatre production of his play The Connection in 1959, Gelber was an active participant in the experimental theater scene of the 1960s and 1970s in New York. Along with playwrights such as Edward Albee, Jack Richardson, Arthur Kopit, and Amiri Baraka, Gelber challenged the form of conventional American drama, thus providing a significant body of plays that helped bring credibility to Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway theater.

Jack Gelber was born on 12 April 1932 in Chicago, where he lived as a child. He attended the University of Illinois, receiving a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1953. In 1957 he married Carol Westenberg; they...