Dan’s Papers April 1, 2011 danspapers.com Page 35
Lanford Wilson, 73 Lanford Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one of the most prolific Off Broadway dramatists of our time, died on March 24 in Wayne, N.J. He was 73 and had lived in Sag Harbor since 1970. The cause of his death was pneumonia. Lanford Eugene Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was very young and he moved with his mother to Ozark, Missouri. His hometown of Lebanon was the setting for Talley’s Folly, which played Off Broadway in New York and starred Judd Hirsch and Trish Hawkins. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. Talley’s Folly was the second play in what would come to be known as the Talley Cycle, a trilogy that included Fifth of July (1978) and Talley and Son (1985). Fifth of July was produced last summer by the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, directed by Terry Kinney. In a statement issued Friday, Sybil Christopher and Murphy Davis, Artistic Directors of Bay Street Theatre, said: “The loss of Lanford Wilson will be felt very deeply not only at the Bay Street Theatre but also in our community in Sag Harbor. Lanford was a wonderful fixture here in town and we were fortunate and privileged to have been able to collaborate with him over the past 20 years. We will miss him greatly but his work and his art will always be an inspiration to all of us here at Bay Street.” In the late 1950s, Wilson worked as a commercial artist in Chicago where he also wrote short stories and plays. After being rejected by
many magazines he settled in New York in 1962 and continued writing plays while attending Broadway productions. Disappointed with everything he saw on the conventional stage, he turned to “Off-Off Broadway,” and by mid-decade his first work was produced. Wilson’s first full-length play, Balm in Gilead, staged in 1965 at La MaMa in New York, garnered critical praise and sold-out performances. Last summer, 45 years later, Wilson attended a work in progress at the Bay Street Theatre of the musical Raindogs, based upon Balm in Gilead. The production was contemporary and exuberant, buoyed by an original score and Wilson’s gritty dialogue. When asked by an audience member how he achieved dialogue that seemed like eavesdropping on real people in the moment, he recalled that that as a young writer he would “exercise” by furiously scribbling the overlapping conversations at his favorite Upper West Side bar. In 1969, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company in Manhattan with Marshall W. Mason, Tanya Berezin and Rob Thirkield. It operated continuously until 1996. The Circle Rep produced plays by Wilson as well as Sam Shepard, Jules Feiffer, Larry Kramer and others. Actors who worked in the company include William Hurt, Kathy Bates, Barnard Hughes, Cherry Jones and Cynthia Nixon. Lemon Sky, an autobiographical play about Wilson’s reunion with his estranged father, opened Off Broadway in 1970. Wilson’s other
Lanford Wilson, right, with Marshall Mason
Off Broadway work (30 plays) include The Hot l Baltimore, about the patrons of a seedy residential hotel. His first play to come to Broadway was The Gingham Dog, about the breakup of an interracial marriage (it ran for just 19 performances in 1969). His other Broadway plays include Burn This (1987), Angels Fall (1983) and Redwood Curtain (1993). Wilson’s memorable characters are most often referred to as “marginalized,” and it is little wonder. He was the product of what was then known as a ‘’broken home,” the son of an absentee father and a struggling mother. He was a child of the Ozarks who himself struggled to make it in the city. He was openly gay in a time when it unacceptable to be gay, and is widely credited with writing the first central gay and lesbian characters for the stage. On Friday night, theaters in New York and Sag Harbor dimmed their lights in memory of Lanford Wilson. He is survived by two halfbrothers, John and Jim, and a stepsister, Judy.
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