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One of America's leading playwrights, Lanford Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri in 1937. He is a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway and regional theatre movements. He won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Talley's Folly (1979). He attended schools in Missouri, San Diego, California and Chicago before moving to New York City in 1962. From 1963 his plays were produced regularly at Off-Off-Broadway theatres such as Caffe Cino and La Mama Experimental Theatre Company. During this period, his name rocketed onto the New York scene with the controversial Balm in Gilead, which premiered in 1965.
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He is the author of Balm In Gilead, The Rimers Of Eldritch, The Gingham Dog, Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie, The Hot L Baltimore, The Mound Boulders, Angels Fall, 5th Of July, Talley & Son, Talley’s Folly, Burn This, Redwood Curtain, Trinity, A Sense Of Place Or Virgil Is Still The Frogboy, Sympathetic Magic, Book Of Days and some thirty one act plays including Brontosaurus, The Great Nebula In Orion and the paired A Poster Of The Cosmos and The Moonshot Tape. For television: Taxi! (no relation to the series) and The Migrants, from a story by Tennessee Williams. He has also written the libretto for Lee Hoiby’s opera of Williams’ Summer and Smoke and a new translation of Chekov’s Three Sisters.
Awards include the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award in Theatre Arts, The Institute of Arts and Letters Award, The Edward Albee Last Frontier Award, The John Steinbeck Award, The State of Missouri Outstanding Artists Award, The Drama Desk Award for Rimers Of Eldritch, The Drama-Logue Award (Los Angeles) for Talley’s Folly and 5th Of July, two New York Drama Critic’s awards for Best Play (Hot L and Tally’s Folly), 3 Obie Awards for Best Play (Hot L, The Mound Builders and Sympathetic Magic), an Obie for Sustained Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Talley’s Folly). He was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1994, The American Academy of Achievement in 1995 and the Missouri Writer’s Hall of Fame in 1998.
Wilson is a founder (with Tanya Berezin, Rob Thirkield and Marshall W. Mason) of The Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was a resident playwright there from 1969-1995. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and has made his home in Sag Harbor since 1970.
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