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Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) was an American playwright, considered one of the founders of the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He is most well known for his play, Talley's Folly, which opened in 1979 and received the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for 1980. He started and wrote for many theater companies, including the Circle Repertory Company, Cafe La Mama, Caffe Cino, and New York State Summer School of the Arts. He received the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards in 2010.

Early Life
Wilson was born on April 13, 1937 in Lebanon, Missouri. His parents, Ralph and Violetta Wilson, divorced when he was only five years old. After the divorce he stayed with his mother and grandmother in various parts of Missouri living a poor but happy life. Wilson, although happy, was extremely affected by the divorce of his parents. This can be seen in many of his major works through his portrayal of characters who either lack a sense of home or a sense of belonging to their society and others around them.

When he was in school Wilson developed a love for film and art and began going to the local movie theatre regularly. Through these visits he found his love for acting and eventually became involved in his high school plays. His most notable performance was as Tom in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

Wilson attended Southwest Missouri State University. During his time there he was very lost, torn between art and story writing. At this time he had considered writing to be more of a hobby and was not sure if he should take it seriously. He eventually left without obtaining his degree. It was at this time that he decided to spend some more time with his father and moved to San Diego where he worked as a riveter in the Ryan Aircraft Plant. During his time in San Diego he also took art and art history classes at the State College. His time with his father proved to be incredibly difficult, leaving Wilson feeling unwanted and unaccepted as a homosexual. The emotions that came from this experience led him to create Lemon Sky, an autobiographical work.

After this unsuccessful living period with his father Wilson moved to Chicago where he lived for six years. Here, he became a part of the counterculture of the city, even acting as a male prostitute for some time. It was these counterculture people that he involved himself with in Chicago that became the inspiration for plays such as Balm in Gilead and The Hot l Baltimore. He worked as a graphic artist for a short period of time before he realized through his hobby of short story writing that he wanted to be a playwright. He enrolled in a playwriting class at the University of Chicago where he created several one-act plays.

In 1962, Wilson moved to Greenwich Village in New York City to find a place in the theatre scene there. He worked several dead-end jobs while there in order to support himself before finding a job in the subscriptions office of the New York Shakespeare Festival. After seeing Eugene Ionesco’s The Lesson at the Caffe Cino, Wilson met the producer Joseph Cino along with his fellow cofounder of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, Ellen Stewart who helped him get started in his career.

Career
Lanford Wilson first began his career as a playwright at Caffe Cinco in New York City. He worked odd jobs to support himself during this Off-Off-Broadway apprenticeship. The first phase of his career, from 1963-1965, began with The Madness of Lady Bright, Home Free,Ludlow Fair, Days Ahead, This Is the Rill Speaking and The Sand Castle. These were all short, experimental plays done at Caffe Cinco. The Madness of Lady Bright premiered at the Caffe Cino in May 1964 and was the venue's first significant success. The play featured actor Neil Flanagan in the title role as Leslie Bright, a neurotic aging queen. The Madness of Lady Bright is considered a landmark play in the representation of homosexuality. It lasted for over 200 performances, making it the longest-running play ever seen at the Caffe Cino.

After such success, he was invited to write for another Off-Off-Broadway stage, Ellen Stewart'sCafe La Mama from 1965-1972. Here he wrote his first full-length plays. These plays included Balm in Gilead (1965), an urban play about New York's detritus, The Rimers of Eldritch (1966), a Midwestern play, The Gingham Dog (1968) about the breakup of an interracial couple and Lemon Sky (1968) about Wilson's reconciliation with his father in San Diego. Lemon Sky is his most autobiographical play, which tells the story of a young man's struggle with his crude, uneducated father, when he tries to come out of the closet. The Rimers of Eldritch was so successful that it won the 1966-1967 Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award for contribution of Off-Broadway theater.

Landon Wilson then experienced his first writer's block. Therefore, in 1969 when Marshall Mason,Rob Thirkield, and Tanya Berezin began to discuss forming a company, he readily joined them to establish the Circle Repertory Company. This led to the next phase of his career from 1972-1976, when he wrote his first plays for the Company. Here he wrote some of his most significant works, most of which were directed by Mason. His first plays for the Company in 1972 were a one-act, The Great Nebula in Orion, and an improvisational round, The Family Continues. The first major success was The Hot l Baltimore (1972), winning the New York Drama Critics Circle and Obie awards for best play of the 1972-1973 season. It was also instrumental in Wilson's achievement of the Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award. It ran for 1,166 performances in a venue seating 299 people. Also during this time, he wrote The Mound Builders (1976), a Midwestern play, and Brontosaurus (1977), a one-act play about a Manhattan antique dealer.

From 1977-1981, Wilson went through the major phase of his career. His main influence was the Talley family of Lebanon, Missouri. He first wrote 5th of July which opened in April 1978 at the Circle Rep for 168 performances and later moved to Broadway and received a nomination for a Tony Award. Two of the central characters in 5th of July are a gay couple living in a Midwestern town, one of whom is a disabled Vietnam veteran. Next he wrote Talley's Folly, opening in 1979 and received the Pulitzer Prize for drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for 1980. He also wrote Talley & Son which received its final title 1985.

After completing his works about the Talleys, he moved onto Thymus Vulgaris (1981) a one act play in a California setting followed by Angels Fall set in a New Mexico mission in 1982. He then revised scripts of his older plays and completed a translation of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters. Talley's Folly was then turned into a screenplay starring Judd Hirsch. Then in 1987 he wrote a new play Burn This which opened with John Malkovich. In Burn This, the central character is a gay man who writes advertising for a living and is involved with both gay identity and straight friends, one of whom has died in a boating accident before the play begins. The entire group struggles together to deal with their collective grief. Wilson was also a founding member of the New York State Summer School of the Arts, of which Circle Rep was the theater contingent.

In 2010, Debra Monk presented Wilson with the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. This honor was bestowed on Wilson on behalf of his peers and fellow artists of the Off-Off-Broadway community "in recognition of his brave and unique works that helped established the Off-Off-Broadway community, and propel the independent theatre voice as an important contributor to the American stage."

Personal Life
Though Lanford Wilson did not have a remarkable relationship with his father, he maintained a strong friendship with his mentor, Joseph Cino, until Cino committed suicide in 1967. Lanford Wilson moved to New York in the early 1960s, and remained a resident of New York City; eventually settling down in a small apartment in West Greenwich Village on Sheridan Square. After his work, Hot I Baltimore, became a hit in 1972, he purchased a home in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Until around 1998, Wilson began inhabiting both places; using the apartment in New York for business with the theatres, and maintaining his home in Sag Harbor as his primary place of residence. When abiding in New York, Wilson was closely involved with the Playwrights Laboratory at the Circle Repertory Company; often attending readings, rehearsals, and productions. After Wilson relinquished his apartment in New York, he became very active in the Sag Harbor theatre scene, even producing some of his shorter plays in their local theatres. On Thursday, March 24, 2011, Lanford Wilson died due to complications of pneumonia. Wilson is survived by two half-brothers, John and Jim, and one stepsister, Judy. Though Lanford Wilson was openly homosexual, he was single at the time of his demise, and did not have children.

List of Works

 * Home Free! (1964)
 * The Madness of Lady Bright (1964)
 * Balm in Gilead (1965)
 * Ludlow Fair (1965)
 * Wandering (1966)
 * The Rimers of Eldritch (1967)
 * The Gingham Dog (1968)
 * Lemon Sky (1970)
 * Serenading Louie (1970)
 * The Hot l Baltimore (1973)
 * The Mound Builders (1975)
 * Fifth of July (1978)
 * Talley's Folly (1979)
 * A Tale Told (1981, later revised and renamed Talley & Son)
 * Angels Fall (1983)
 * Burn This (1986)
 * Redwood Curtain (1992)
 * A Sense of Place (1996)
 * Sympathetic Magic (1998)
 * Book of Days (2000)
 * Rain Dance (2002)