LANFORD
WILSON
Lebanon, Missouri, a town today with a population under
10,000, has been home to at least two well-known figures.
One of them is a nationally syndicated radio
talk-show host. The other is the Pulitzer Prize winning
playwright Lanford Eugene Wilson-born in Lebanon, and
then moved to nearby big city of Springfield, and then
back to the even tinier town of Ozark, Missouri.
From Missouri, it was off to California and beyond.
He attended college in San Diego and then began writing
at the University of Chicago in 1959. Upon graduation,
he moved to New York City, an environment he found stimulating.
Wilson explains, "I was so excited by the sounds of
what was around me, those incredibly vibrant though
maybe burned-out lives banging against each other."
This would prove to be the theme, the driving force,
behind much of his work.
He soon became involved with a group of theatrical artists
at the Café Cino, one of the many tiny coffeehouses
Off-Off Broadway. Wilson served not only as playwright,
but also as director, actor and designer. His first
play, So Long At The Fair was produced at the Café Cino
in 1963. In 1965, Wilson met a young director named
Marshall W. Mason. The young playwright soon gave Mason
a copy of his latest play, Balm In Gilead. Several months
later, Balm In Gilead opened under the direction of
Mason at the Café La Mama. Not only was the play a critical
success, but the beginning of a long and profitable
collaboration between the two artists.
In 1969, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company
with a group of friends that included Mason. The company's
first major success was Wilson's Hot L Baltimore
(1973), the story of a group of drifters, prostitutes,
and aging residents in a run-down hotel scheduled for
demolition. Hot L Baltimore, directed by Mason,
ran for 1,100 performances and eventually moved to Broadway
to be the longest running show on Broadway to date!
Other Circle Rep productions include The Mound Builders,
5th Of July, Serenading Louis, Angels Fall, and
Talley's Folly, for which Wilson won the Pulitzer
Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle
Award. In spite of the Pulitzer for Talley's Folly,
he considers The Mound Builders to be his best
work.
Lanford Wilson's work has been compared to that of Tennessee
Williams, William Inge, and Lillian Hellman. His plays
usually explore themes of alienation, loneliness, and
disillusionment. Recently, he learned Russian in order
to be able to translate the works of one of his favorite
authors, Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov.
During the course of his career, Lanford Wilson has
authored 17 full length and over 30 short plays. Wilson's
awards include, among others, the Vernon Rice Award,
the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer
Circle Award, and four Obie's. He has also been the
recipient of the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award
in Theatre Arts and the Institute of Arts and Letters
Award. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council
as well as a founding member of the Circle Repertory
Company in New York and one of twenty-one resident playwrights
for the company.
This award-winning playwright, however, still recalls
his Missouri roots and his early interest in the arts.
"I was always very excited by the theatre," he said
in an interview. "Growing up, I had no idea plays were
written, for some reason. I started out writing stories,
and then suddenly I realized something I was writing
was a play." Once in New York, he says, the writing
experience was overwhelming. "I couldn't write fast
enough," he said, "After a while I thought, here I am,
this hillbilly person writing all these New York plays.
What am I doing? The sound of Missouri-I know that better
than I know anything."
Lanford Wilson, who at different times worked as a typist,
a hotel clerk, and a dishwasher in order to pay the
rent, today lives in Sag Harbor in the house that Hot
L Baltimore built-or rather-, which provided the funds
for restoration.
Lanford Wilson, however, is still a home-state favorite.
Book Of Days premiered in St. Louis at the Rep
last year, and Tally's Folly is on the schedule
for next season.
At times he may have captured the New York sounds but,
as he stated, it is the sound of Missouri that he knows
best. In setting a number of his plays in Missouri he
has, in a sense, allowed all of us to be a part of his
work, and we are privileged to be able to honor him
this evening.
Biography-October 8, 2000.
