Lanford Wilson

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Wilson, Lanford (1937–), Missouri‐born playwright, reared by his mother in the Ozarks and then in the Midwest until, as a teenager, he went to southern California to be with his long‐divorced father. Wilson's dramatic career began at Caffe Cino, a small off‐off‐Broadway coffeehouse in Greenwich Village. His one‐act plays produced there include So Long at the Fair (1963); Home Free (1964), about the incestuous love of a brother and sister; and The Madness of Lady Bright (1964), presenting a pathetic, aging, flamboyant homosexual. These were followed by a move to off‐Broadway with the full‐length plays Balm in Gilead (1964), a view of life in an all‐night New York diner; and The Rimers of Eldritch (1965), depicting blighted lives in a Midwestern ghost town. This Is the Rill Speaking (1965) is a happier nostalgic view of life in an Ozarks village. Wilson's plays moved to Broadway and other major producing centers with The Gingham Dog (1968), treating the breakup of the marriage of a liberal white architect and his young black wife; Lemon Sky (1970), about a young boy leaving his divorced mother to live in California with his father and finding that no better as he is falsely accused of homosexuality; and Serenading Louie (1970), presenting the deteriorating lives of two couples, which had seemed so bright in college days. Wilson joined the Circle Repertory Company (founded 1969), a small off‐Broadway team of actors, playwrights, and designers, for which he wrote one‐act plays and longer works. The Hot l Baltimore (1973), set in a derelict hotel whose sign has even lost a letter, is peopled in its last days by pathetic outcasts who still live on wistful hopes. The Mound Builders (1975) contrasts views of the earth, and thus metaphorically of life, by archaeologists digging an ancient Indian site in the Midwest and the realtor who hopes to develop it. 5th of July (1978) views the disintegration of radicals and flower children of the 1960s as they live into a new decade. The parents of some of these characters are presented in Talley's Folly (1979, Pulitzer Prize), treating the romance of an unlikely couple, a shy Missouri village girl and an older, Jewish accountant from a big city. A Tale Told (1981) is a third view of the Talley family, set in 1944 at the same time as the preceding play's depiction of the romance between Matt Friedman and Sally Talley. Angels Fall (1982) brings together at an isolated mission in New Mexico a disparate group of people stranded because of an accident at a nearby uranium mine. They are a jolly priest, an insecure New England college professor of art history and his wife, the widow of a local painter and her lover, a professional tennis player, and an educated Indian of the region, and all reveal themselves through their plotless relationships. The dramas Burn This (1987), Redwood Curtain (1993), Book of Days (1998), and Rain Dance (2001) further secured Wilson's place among the foremost American playwrights. In the late 1990s several volumes of Wilson's collected plays were published. Wilson has also written an adaptation for the screen (1970) of Tennessee Williams's story One Arm; a television play, The Migrants (1974), with him; and the libretto for an operatic version (1971) of his Summer and Smoke.

Lanford Wilson 1937–2011, American playwright, b. Lebanon, Mo. An important figure in modern drama, he was a master of earthy, realistic dialogue in which monologue, conversation, and direct address to the audience overlap. Frequent themes include decay, dissolution, loneliness, and loss, and he addresses such issues as American conformity, family conflicts, and the plight of social outcasts, whom he characterized with empathy and understanding. Wilson, who was gay, also was one of the first playwrights to realistically portray gay and lesbian characters.

Wilson settled in New York City in 1962 and soon became part of the "off-off-Broadway" movement, producing such one-act plays as So Long at the Fair (1963) and Home Free! (1964). He graduated to off-Broadway with the production of his first full-length play, Balm in Gilead (1964), and moved to Broadway with The Gingham Dog (1968). In 1969 he cofounded the Circle Repertory Theatre in Greenwich Village, where, until its closing (1996), many of his plays were performed. Among these were the extremely successful The Hot l Baltimore (1972) and an acclaimed trilogy— Fifth of July (1978), Talley's Folly (1980, Pulitzer Prize), and A Tale Told (1981)—plays set in Wilson's hometown that span several decades. His later dramas include Angels Fall (1982), Burn This (1987), Redwood Curtain (1993), Book of Days (1998), and Rain Dance (2002).

Bibliography: See G. A. Barnett, Lanford Wilson (1987); M. Busby, Lanford Wilson (1987); P. M. Williams, A Comfortable House: Lanford Wilson, Marshall W. Mason, and the Circle Repertory Theatre (1993); J. R. Bryer, ed., Lanford Wilson: A Casebook (1994); A. Dean, Discovery and Invention: The Urban Plays of Lanford Wilson (1994).

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.