— Ch. 1 · A Military Childhood And A Political Awakening —
Beau Willimon.
~6 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
Pack Beauregard Willimon was born on the 26th of October 1977 in Alexandria, Virginia. His father served as a captain in the United States Navy and moved the family frequently during Beau's early years. They lived in Hawaii before settling in San Francisco, California. The family later relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and finally St. Louis, Missouri after his father retired to become a lawyer. This constant movement shaped a childhood defined by transition rather than stability.
Willimon attended John Burroughs School where he took drama classes taught by Jon Hamm. He graduated from that school in 1995 with a focus on history and visual arts. He then received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1999. During his time as an undergraduate student, he met Jay Carson who would become a significant collaborator later in life.
Political engagement began for him while still at college. In 1998, he worked as a volunteer and intern for the Senate campaign of Charles Schumer. This experience led directly to jobs with Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign and Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign. Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign also employed him shortly after those earlier roles. These positions provided the raw material for his future work in theater.
From Campaigns To The Stage
After graduating from Columbia, Willimon traveled abroad to work for the ministry of the interior for the Estonian government in Tallinn. He spent time sorting through thousands of pages of European Union related documents during this fellowship. He moved to Vietnam next to work for a small cultural magazine. There he conducted research for his first screenplay based on the life of Tomas Vu. Tomas Vu was a visual arts professor at Columbia who grew up in Vietnam during the war.
He returned to New York City to attend Columbia's School of the Arts. One of his mentors there was playwright Eduardo Machado. Willimon described himself as the worst student by far in their group. Many others had known they wanted to be playwrights forever while he lacked any idea how to truly write a play. He quit drinking then and committed himself fully to the path of writing plays.
During graduate school he received a visual arts scholarship for a proposal to create forty lithographs about paranoia. He lived in South Africa for one year before earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in Playwriting from the School of the Arts in 2003. After graduation he worked odd jobs including gallery assistant, painter's assistant, set builder, finding jobs for homeless people, barista, and an instructor teaching SAT prep classes.