Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson | |
|---|---|
| Wilson presenting at the 2006 New York Innovative Theatre Awards Wilson presenting at the 2006 New York Innovative Theatre Awards | |
| Born | 13 April 1937 Lebanon, Missouri, USA |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | San Diego State University University of Chicago |
| Notable works | The Hot l Baltimore (1973) |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1980), Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards (2010) |
Lanford Wilson (13 April 1937 – 24 March 2011) is an American playwright, considered one of the founders of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Biography
Early years
Wilson was born to Ralph Eugene and Violetta Tate Wilson in Lebanon, Missouri. After the divorce of his parents, he moved with his mother to Springfield, until she remarried and when he was eleven and they moved again to Ozark. There he attended high school, and upon graduation, he moved San Diego, California to live with his father, where he briefly attended San Diego State University. He then lived for six years in Chicago, where he began to explore play writing at the University of Chicago.
Career
Wilson began his active career as a playwright in the early 1960s at the Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village, writing one-act plays such as Ludlow Fair, Home Free!, and The Madness of Lady Bright. The Madness of Lady Bright premiered at the Caffe Cino in May 1964 and was the venue's first significant hit. The play featured actor Neil Flanagan in the title role as Leslie Bright, a neurotic aging queen. The Madness of Lady Bright is considered a landmark play in the representation of male homosexuality. It was the longest running play ever to appear at the Caffe Cino, where it was performed over two hundred times. Wilson was subsequently invited to present his work Off-Broadway, including his plays Balm in Gilead and The Rimers of Eldritch produced at Cafe LaMama.
Wilson is a founding member of New York State Summer School of the Arts.
Wilson was a founding member of the Circle Repertory Company in 1969. Many of his plays were first presented there, directed by his long-standing collaborative partner, Marshall W. Mason. The Circle Rep's production of Wilson's The Hot l Baltimore won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Obie Award, and in 1979 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Talley's Folly.
Wilson's style and approach has evolved over the years, sometimes resulting in drastically different effects. Some of his plays are extremely radical and experimental in nature while others clearly have a more mainstream, if still creative, sensibility. His first full length play, Balm in Gilead, is perhaps his most radical, yet it also remains one of his most popular. The play had a memorable Off-Broadway revival in the 1980s, directed by John Malkovich, a co-production of Circle Repertory Company and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
As the above description of The Madness of Lady Bright indicates, gay identity and struggle is a major theme in Wilson's work, although some of his plays, such as Talley's Folley (1979), which won him the Pulitzer Prize, don't explore it at all. Among the other plays which deal with gay identity the most in his work are the early, autobiographical Lemon Sky (1970), Fifth of July (1978), and Burn This (1986). Lemon Sky tells the story of a young man's struggle with his crude, uneducated father, when he tries to come out of the closet. In Fifth of July, a hit on Broadway in the 1970s, two of the central characters are a gay couple living in a small town, one of whom is a disabled veteran of Vietnam. In Burn This a central character is a gay man who writes advertising for a living and is involved with a group of both gay and straight friends, one of whom has committed suicide before the play begins. The entire group struggles together to deal with their collective grief.
Wilson belongs to the very exclusive club of serious American playwrights who have had multiple hits on Broadway. His plays which have run nine months or more on Broadway include Fifth of July, Pulitzer Prize-winning Talley's Folly, and Burn This. Hot l Baltimore, one of his most successful plays, ran for four years in a venue seating about eight hundred people but which was not technically classified as a Broadway house by some. It was also adapted into a short-lived television comedy by TV producer Norman Lear.
Some of Wilson's plays have been produced as made-for-TV movies. In that respect Wilson's career can be contrasted usefully with that of his off-off-Broadway colleague, Sam Shepard. Both playwrights were among the most popular on the off-off-Broadway circuit in the early 1960s, and both later ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize, Shepard in 1979, Wilson in 1980. With the exception of some fairly brief revivals, Shepard has never had a hit on Broadway, but several of his plays have been made into movies. Wilson did much better on Broadway but has not been able to make a serious impression in films.
Some of Wilson's early plays never had a major commercial production and seem ripe for revival. This is particularly true of The Rimers of Eldritch (1967), the chilling story of a small town's revenge against an outsider. It is told in a disruptive style which jumps back and forth in time, with actors playing multiple roles who portray the entire population of the town.
Wilson and his directing collaborator Marshall Mason are followers of so-called "method" acting and often hark back to the classic techniques of Anton Chekhov, updated with some distinctly modernist and post-modernist touches. They have also been close to and have been fervent admirers of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee. Some of Wilson's best plays feature strong, sympathetic central characters, truly repulsive and evil villains, agonizing plot twists, and tragic or semi-tragic endings. On the other hand Wilson's versatility is evident in Talley's Folly, a passionate, heterosexual romance which some critics have speculated is actually about a gay couple.
In addition to writing plays, Wilson has written the texts for several twentieth century operas, including at least two collaborations with composer Lee Hoiby: Summer and Smoke (1971) and This is the Rill Speaking (1992) (based on his own play).
In 2010, Debra Monk presented Wilson with the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. This honor was bestowed on Wilson on behalf of his peers and fellow artists of the Off-Off-Broadway community "in recognition of his brave and unique works that helped established the Off-Off-Broadway community, and propel the independent theatre voice as an important contributor to the American stage."[1][2]
Bibliography
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The following list is not complete and includes only some major works. Wilson has written dozens of short plays, many of which are outstanding. They are collected in a volume entitled "Twenty-one short plays of Lanford Wilson."
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References
- Don S. Lawson (17 October 2007). "Wilson, Lanford (b. 1937)". glbtq Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
- "Biography of American dramatist Lanford Wilson". Moonstruck Drama Bookstore. 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
- ^ Winners of 2010 IT Awards Announced by Michael Andronico, Back Stage September 21, 2010
- ^ Children of Eden, Samuel and Alasdair, and More Win 2010 IT Awards by Dan Bacalzo, Theatremania, September 20, 2010
External links
- Lanford Wilson at the Internet Broadway Database
- Lanford Wilson at IMDb
- Wilson at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Robert Patrick's Lanford Wilson page
- 1937 births
- Living people
- People from Laclede County, Missouri
- American dramatists and playwrights
- Drama Desk Award winners
- Gay writers
- Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama winners
- San Diego State University alumni
- Theatre World Award winners
- University of Chicago alumni
- Writers from Chicago, Illinois
- Writers from Missouri
- Writers from New York City