Lanford Wilson
[1] Wilson helped to advance the off-off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964.
Wilson's 1964 short play The Madness of Lady Bright was his first major success and led to further works throughout the 1960s that expressed a variety of social and romantic themes.
[7] A production of Brigadoon had a particularly resounding effect on Wilson, saying that "after that town came back to life on stage, movies didn't stand a chance".
[8] He developed an interest in acting and performed in his high school plays, including the role of Tom in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.
[9] After graduating from Ozark High School in 1955, Wilson began his collegiate studies at Southwest Missouri State College.
[10] During this time, Wilson realized that the short stories he had always enjoyed writing would be more effective as plays, and began to study playwriting at the University of Chicago extension program.
[15] His works for Caffe Cino include Ludlow Fair (originally titled Nail Polish and Tampons), Home Free!, and The Madness of Lady Bright.
On a sultry summer day in the 1960s, while in his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, "Lady" Bright slowly loses his mind.
[22][23] In 1965, Wilson began writing plays for Ellen Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village.
[21] His first full-length plays premiered at La MaMa, including Balm in Gilead, which depicted a doomed romance in an urban greasy spoon diner inhabited by junkies, prostitutes and thieves.
[26][27] Later in 1965, Wilson wrote and directed Miss Williams for a benefit performance at La MaMa called "BbAaNnGg!".
[29] His play This is the Rill Speaking was produced alongside Jean-Claude van Itallie's War and Rochelle Owens' Homo for La MaMa Repertory Troupe's second European tour, in 1966.
[35] 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.
His 1966 play The Rimers of Eldritch addressed hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness in a small town in the rural Midwest and won the 1966/1967 Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award for contribution to off-Broadway theatre.
[40] In 1969, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company with Marshall W. Mason, Tanya Berezin, and Rob Thirkield.
[41][42] Also in 1969, Wilson was hired for $5,000 to adapt Tennessee Williams' short story One Arm, about a male hustler, into a screenplay.
The day after he finished the screenplay, he was invited to a preview of Midnight Cowboy, and after seeing the film thought "there went that idea down the drain".
[43] The Hot l Baltimore, about lowlifes who face eviction when the decaying hotel in which they live is to be demolished, opened in 1973 and was Circle Repertory's first commercial success.
The play had been unsuccessfully performed in 1970 by the Washington Theater Club, and Wilson revised it for Circle Repertory's production, which is generally regarded as its official premiere.
The story centers on Ken Talley, a disabled Vietnam veteran, and his lover Jed, who are living in the house.
"[59] In Burn This, a young gay dancer named Robbie and his lover Dom have died in a boating accident before the play begins.
The title refers to a famous graffiti spray-painted on a railroad bridge that had puzzled people in the Hamptons for years.
Directed by Marshall W. Mason, the production starred Arija Bareiikis, Bobby Cannavale, Jennifer Dundas, Thomas McCarthy, and Josh Pais, running from August 14 to September 9, 1996.
After moving to New York City in 1962, he settled in an apartment on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, where he lived for many years.
[66] When living in Manhattan, he worked with Playwrights Laboratory at the Circle Repertory Company, often attending readings, rehearsals, and productions.
[72] In addition to John Malkovich, Judd Hirsch, Swoosie Kurtz, William Hurt, Jeff Daniels, David Morse, and Christopher Reeve were among the actors who starred in Wilson and Mason's productions.
