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Lanford Wilson

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Lanford Eugene Wilson

(born April 13, 1937, Lebanon, Mo., U.S.) U.S. playwright. He began writing plays in 1962 and became cofounder and director of the Circle Repertory Company (1969 – 95), a regional theatre in New York City. His plays, which are known for their experimental staging, simultaneous dialogue, and deferred character exposition, include Lemon Sky (1970), the long-running hit The Hot l Baltimore (1973), The Mound Builders (1975), Talley's Folly (1979, Pulitzer Prize), Burn This (1987), and By the Sea (1996).

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American Theater Guide: Lanford Wilson
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Wilson, Lanford (b. 1937), playwright. Born in Lebanon, Missouri, he began writing plays while attending the University of Chicago. Coming to New York he soon earned attention for his work presented Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. His first plays to reach a regular playhouse were The Gingham Dog (1969) and Lemon Sky (1970), but in 1973 his picture of life in a dingy hotel, The Hot l Baltimore, began a run of 1,166 performances, an Off‐Broadway record for a nonmusical by an American. He later wrote three plays about the same Missouri family, The Fifth of July (1978), Talley's Folly (1980), and A Tale Told (1981). Other noteworthy works include Balm in Gilead (1965), Rimers of Eldritch (1966), The Mound Builders (1975), Serenading Louie (1976), Angels Fall (1983), Burn This (1987), Redwood Curtain (1993), Book of Days (2002), Rain Dance (2003), and many oft‐produced one‐acts. As a rule Wilson's best work blends the careful structural formality of older schools of playwriting with the preoccupations of modern authors, many of his works having a seemingly loose Chekhovian flavor to them.

Works: Works by Lanford Wilson
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(b. 1937)

1963So Long at the Fair. The Missouri-born playwright's first production, described by Wilson as a "silly comedy" he wrote in one day, concerns a country boy's big-city experiences. It opens at Caffe Cino, a small coffeehouse in New York's Greenwich Village.
1964Home Free and Madness of Lady Bright. The playwright gains his first major success and acclaim for these one-act plays, produced off-off-Broadway. The first dramatizes an incestuous union; the second concerns a fading transvestite homosexual performer. Balm in Gilead, Wilson's first full-length play, also appears. It involves thirty-two characters, including junkies, prostitutes, homosexuals, lesbians, and various hustlers interacting in an all-night New York coffee shop.
1965This Is the Rill Speaking. Wilson produces his first work set in his native Ozarks. Wilson's first Broadway production, The Gingham Dog, about the failure of an interracial marriage, would draw critical praise but close after only five performances in 1969.
1966The Rimers of Eldritch. Wilson's second full-length play employs another large cast to portray inhabitants of a decaying Midwestern town who reveal their true natures, prompted by the murder of the town's hermit.
1970Lemon Sky. Written and initially performed in 1968, Wilson's highly autobiographical play opens in Buffalo and New York City. It traces a college student's futile attempts to be reconciled with his estranged father. Wilson also produces Serenading Louie, a drama concerning suburban couples disappointed by their lives and marriages.
1973The Hot l Baltimore. Wilson's drama is set in a seedy hotel inhabited by prostitutes, hustlers, and indigents. It wins the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
1975The Mound Builders. Wilson juxtaposes different attitudes about the land and life in the values of archaeologists excavating an Indian burial site and a realtor who wants to develop the area.
1978The Fifth of July. The first of Wilson's plays treating the Talley family depicts the return home of a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran.
1979Talley's Folly. The second of the playwright's dramas about the Talley family treats the courtship of Sally Talley by a Jewish accountant. Like other plays in the series, it brilliantly conflates the conflicts in individuals' lives with family histories and the social manners and mores of the times. The play wins the Pulitzer Prize and would also claim the New York Drama Critics Circle Award after transferring from off-Broadway to Broadway in 1980.
1981A Tale Told. This is the third installment in the Talley family saga, to be retitled Talley and Son in 1985. It is set on the same night in 1944 as Talley's Folly and depicts the family's quarrel over their garment business.
1982Angels Fall. A group of travelers seek refuge in a New Mexico mission during a nuclear accident, developing a degree of cooperation that is unusual in Wilson's plays.
1988Burn This. Wilson's play concerns the accidental death of a dancer, which brings together his young brother and his male and female roommates. The drama's emotional intensity is praised by reviewer J. M. Ditsky, who states that "Nothing quite like it has been encountered since Tennessee Williams departed the American theatrical scene."

Wikipedia: Lanford Wilson
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Lanford Wilson
LanfordWilson.jpg
Wilson presenting at the 2006 New York Innovative Theatre Awards
Born 13 April 1937 (1937-04-13) (age 72)
Lebanon, Missouri, USA
Nationality United States
Alma mater San Diego State University
University of Chicago
Information
Debut works Home Free! (1964)
Balm in Gilead (1965)
Notable work(s) The Hot l Baltimore (1973)
Magnum opus Talley's Folly (1979)
Fifth of July (1978)
Awards Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1980)

Lanford Wilson (born 13 April 1937) 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, elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Contents

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 (gay slang). 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.

Founded member of New York State Summer School for 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 Rep and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

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).

Bibliography

References

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Copyrights:

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
American Theater Guide. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lanford Wilson" Read more