Lanford Wilson was one of the first playwrights to move from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond.
39 Facts About Lanford Wilson
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Lanford Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980 and was elected in 2001 to the American Theater Hall of Fame.
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Lanford Wilson was nominated for three Tony Awards and has won a Drama Desk Award and five Obie Awards.
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Lanford Wilson wrote many plays for the Circle Repertory in the 1970s.
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Lanford Wilson received a Tony Award nomination for its Broadway production, which opened in 1980.
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Lanford Wilson was born to Ralph Eugene and Violetta Tate Lanford Wilson in Lebanon, Missouri.
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Lanford Wilson had two half-brothers, John and Jim, and one stepsister, Judy.
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Lanford Wilson attended high school in Ozark and developed a love for film and art.
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Lanford Wilson developed an interest in acting and performed in his high school plays, including the role of Tom in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
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Lanford Wilson studied art and art history at San Diego State College as well as worked as a riveter at the Ryan Aircraft Plant.
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Lanford Wilson left college and moved to Chicago in 1957, where he worked as a graphic artist for an advertising firm.
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In 1962, Lanford Wilson moved to Greenwich Village in New York City.
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Lanford Wilson worked in odd jobs, such as a temporary typist, a reservations clerk at Americana Hotel, at the complaint desk of a furniture store, and at a dishwashing job where a co-worker incorrectly called him "Lance".
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Lanford Wilson eventually worked for the subscription office of the New York Shakespeare Festival.
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Lanford Wilson first encountered the Caffe Cino when he went to see Eugene Ionesco's The Lesson.
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Cino encouraged Lanford Wilson to submit a play to the Cino.
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In Cino, Lanford Wilson found a mentor who would not only critique his plays, but stage them.
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Lanford Wilson continued working odd jobs to support himself during these early years.
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In 1965, Lanford Wilson began writing plays for Ellen Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village.
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Lanford Wilson then designed the set for Donald Julian's In Praise of Folly, directed by Mason at La MaMa in 1969.
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Lanford Wilson participated in the inaugural National Playwrights Conference in 1965 at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center along with Sam Shepard, Edward Albee, and John Guare.
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Lanford Wilson directed a revival of The Rimers of Eldritch at La MaMa in 1981 in celebration of the theater's 20-year anniversary.
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Lanford Wilson returned to the O'Neill Theater Center to develop Lemon Sky in 1968.
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In 1969, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company with Marshall W Mason, Tanya Berezin, and Rob Thirkield.
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Many of Lanford Wilson's plays were first produced at the Circle Repertory and directed by Mason.
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Also in 1969, Lanford Wilson was hired for $5,000 to adapt Tennessee Williams' short story One Arm, about a male hustler, into a screenplay.
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Lanford Wilson's first plays at Circle Repertory, The Great Nebula in Orion, Ikke, Ikke, Nye, Nye, Nye, and The Family Continues, premiered in 1972.
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The Hot l Baltimore was adapted into a short-lived television series by ABC in 1975, which Lanford Wilson pronounced "a disaster".
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The play had been unsuccessfully performed in 1970 by the Washington Theater Club, and Lanford Wilson revised it for Circle Repertory's production, which is generally regarded as its official premiere.
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Sexual identity is among the themes that Lanford Wilson explored in his plays.
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Around this time, Norman Mailer asked Lanford Wilson to adapt The Executioner's Song for a television movie, but Lanford Wilson declined.
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Lanford Wilson collaborated with composer Lee Hoiby for Summer and Smoke and adapted his own play, This is the Rill Speaking, in 1992.
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Williams gave Hoiby permission to compose an opera based on the play, and Hoiby asked Lanford Wilson to adapt the play into a libretto.
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In 1984, Lanford Wilson wrote a new translation of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters for the Hartford Stage Company.
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Lanford Wilson attempted to make his translation sound like everyday speech, as he believed that existing translations were linguistically accurate but not inherently theatrical.
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Lanford Wilson became active with the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, where some of his new short plays were produced, including the 1996 world premiere of his comedy Virgil Is Still the Frogboy, commissioned by the Bay Street Theatre and underwritten by Vanity Fair magazine.
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Lanford Wilson lived in both places, using his Manhattan apartment primarily when he had a play in production there.
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Around 1998, Lanford Wilson gave up his apartment in New York to live full-time in Sag Harbor.
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Lanford Wilson died on March 24,2011, aged 73, from complications of pneumonia.