Lanford Wilson

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Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) was an American playwright.

His work, as published in The New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] well done." Wilson's early plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino in 1964, helped advance the Off-Broadway theater movement.

He was one of the first playwrights to go from Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond. In 1980, he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2001.

Wilson was nominated to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2004 and named recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist.

He has been nominated for three Tony Awards, has received a Drama Desk Award, and five Obie Awards. Wilson's 1964 short play The Madness of Lady Brightman was Wilson's first major success and spawned more works in the 1960s that explored a variety of social and romantic themes.

With theatre director Marshall W. Mason, he co-founded the Circle Repertory Company in 1969.

In the 1970s, he wrote many plays for the Circle Repertory.

His 1973 play The Hot l Baltimore was the company's first major success for both audiences and critics.

The Off-Broadway's production surpassed 1,000 performances. His performance Fifth of July was first performed at Circle Repertory in 1978.

He received a Tony Award nomination for his Broadway performance, which opened in 1980.

Talley's Folly (opened 1979 at Circle Repertory) opened on Broadway before Wilson was named the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and his first Tony nomination.

This (1987) was another Broadway hit.

Wilson also wrote the libretti for many operas.

Childhood and education

Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri, to Ralph Eugene and Violetta Tate Wilson. After his parents divorced when he was five, he and his mother went to Springfield, Missouri, where they lived until she remarried. When he was 11, his mother married Walt E. Lenhard, a local farmer from Ozark, Missouri, and the family lived with him. He had two half-brothers, John and Jim, as well as one stepsister, Judy. He went to high school in Ozark and developed a passion for film and art. Wilson, a child, loved writing short stories and attending plays at Southwest Missouri State College (now Missouri State University). Wilson's biography was a success, but "after that town came back to life on stage, movies didn't have a chance." He developed an interest in acting and performing in his high school dramas, including the role of Tom in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.

Wilson began his undergraduate studies at Southwest Missouri State College after graduating from Ozark High School in 1955. He moved to San Diego, California, where his father had been relocated after his parents' divorce. He studied art and art history at San Diego State College as well as worked as a riveter at the Ryan Aircraft Plant. Wilson's reunion with his father was difficult, but the friendship blossomed in later years, and Wilson based his play Lemon Sky on their family's friendship. Wilson left college and moved to Chicago, where he worked as a graphic designer for a newspaper company. Wilson found that the short stories he had always enjoyed writing would be more effective as plays and that he should research playwriting at the University of Chicago Extension program during this period.

Early work (1962-1968)

Wilson moved to Greenwich Village in New York City in 1962. He served in odd jobs, including as a temporary typist, a reservations clerk at Americana Hotel, and a dishwashing job in which a coworker incorrectly named him "Lance." Wilson's family all identified him by that name after that. Wilson later worked in the New York Shakespeare Festival's subscription office.

Wilson first saw the Caffe Cino while visiting Eugène Ionesco's The Lesson at The Lesson. After the event, he was left wondering that theatre "could be both scary and amusing in the same way at the same time." Wilson introduced himself to Cino co-founder and producer Joe Cino, a pioneer of the Off-Broadway movement, following the performance. Wilson was encouraged by Cino to write a play. Wilson met in Cino with a mentor who would not only examine his performances but also stage them.

So Long at the Fair, Wilson's first play to premiere at Cino, was in August 1963. Ludlow Fair (originally titled Nail Polish and Tampons), Home Free!, and Lady Bright's Madness are among his Caffe Cino's works. During those early years, he continued working odd jobs to support himself. In May 1964, Lady Bright, the Madness of Lady Bright, premiered at Caffe Cino. The play "Lady" Bright, who is a forty-year-old "screaming preening queen," is the subject of the tale. As "Lady" Bright's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side of the 1960s fades his focus, on a sultry summer day in the 1960s. It's a complicated and humourous tale of striking originality and one of Wilson's most influential and finest creations. The work, at its core, is a penetrating investigation of loneliness and loneliness. It was one of off-Broadway's first major successes, attracting over 200 performances. Lady Bright's Madness set a new record for the longest-running play at Caffe Cino.

Wilson began writing plays for Ellen Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village in 1965. Balm in Gilead, his first full-length plays premiered at La MaMa, depicting a doomed romance in a greasy spoon diner populated by junkies, prostitutes, and robbers. Balm in Gilead first appeared at La MaMa in 1965, directed by Marshall W. Mason. The performance was revived in 1984 by the Circle Repertory Company and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and directed by John Malkovich. Wilson penned and directed Miss Williams in 1965 for a La MaMa benefit appearance called "BbAaNnGg." "Italian people are portrayed as a "broadcaster" who explains the movie "Gifton" has been on the radio.

In 1965, Wilson's plays Home Free!

For La MaMa Repertory Troupe's first European tour, no Trespassing was recorded. This is the Rill Speaking Company was performed in collaboration with Jean-Claude van Itallie's War and Rochelle Owens' Homo for La MaMa Repertory Troupe's second European tour in 1966. Untitled was directed by Tom O'Horgan for La MaMa Repertory Troupe's third European tour in 1967. Sam Shepard, Tom Eyen, Leonard Melfi, Paul Foster, and Owen Owens directed him. Wilson did not write his own plays at La MaMa, but he did set design for other playwrights' performances. He designed the scene for Foster's The Madonna in the Orchard, directed by O'Horgan at La MaMa in 1966. He created the scene for Donald Julian's In Praise of Folly, which was directed by Mason at La MaMa in 1969.

Wilson's play The Sand Castle was first performed at La MaMa in 1965, as directed by Mason, and then again directed by Mason at La MaMa in 1967. Wilson, Samuel Shepard, Edward Albee, and John Guare all attended the inaugural National Playwrights Conference in 1965 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. In a small town in the rural Midwest, his 1966 play The Rimers of Eldritch explored hypocrisy and narrowmindedness and received the 1967-1967 Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award for his contribution to off-Broadway theatre. It was first introduced at La MaMa in 1966, under Wilson's direction. In 1981, Wilson directed a revival of The Rimers of Eldritch at La MaMa in honor of the theater's 20-year anniversary.

The Rimers of Eldritch was followed by The Gingham Dog (1968) about an interracial couple's breakup. In 1968, he returned to the O'Neill Theater Center to create Lemon Sky. Wilson characterized Lemon Sky (1968) as "autobiographical in the sense." Wilson's portrayal of himself as the play's narrator Alan Wilson explores his struggle with his long-absent father. They are unable to satisfy each others' aspirations, and Alan is disillusioned by his father's authoritarianism and narrow-mindedness.

Personal life and death

Wilson was outright gay. He moved to New York City in 1962 and spent his time in a Sheridan Square apartment in Greenwich Village, where he spent many years. He bought a house in Sag Harbor, Long Island, in the 1970s. He lived in both places, primarily because he had a play in production there. He worked at Playwrights Laboratory at the Circle Repertory Company in Manhattan, often attending readings, rehearsals, and performances.

Wilson left his New York apartment to live full-time in Sag Harbor around 1998.

Wilson died on March 24, 2011, age 73, from pneumonia complications.

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