Origins & Early Life

Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) was an American playwright. His work, as described by The New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed". 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. He was one of the first playwrights to move from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond.

Pivotal Works & Achievements

Wilson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama & Performance Art in 1972. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980 and was elected in 2001 to the American Theater Hall of Fame. In 2004, Wilson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist. He was nominated for three Tony Awards and has won a Drama Desk Award and five Obie Awards. 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.

Enduring Legacy & Impact

In 1969, he co-founded the Circle Repertory Company with theatre director Marshall W. Mason. He wrote many plays...

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