Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson is an American playwright who was born on April 13, 1937 in Lebanon, Missouri. He was raised in the Ozarks until, as a teenager, he moved to California to live with his father, from whom his mother had been long divorced. He began his career as a playwright in the early 1960’s at the Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village with one-act plays such as “Ludlow Fair,” “Home Free,” and “The Madness of Lady Bright.” He soon moved to off-Broadway with “Balm in Gilead” in 1964 and “The Rimers of Eldrich” in 1965. Wilson was a founding member of the Circle Theatre Company, which began in 1969. Many of his plays were first presented there, including “The Hot L Baltimore,” which won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award, the Outer Critics’ Circle Award, and the Obie Award[?], and “Fifth of July,” which later had a successful production on Broadway. Wilson’s 1979 play, “Talley’s Folly[?]” won the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Other plays by Wilson include:

• “The Gingham Dog” (1968)
• “Lemon Sky” (1970)
• “The Mound Builders” (1975)
• “A Tale Told” (1981—later revised and renamed “Talley & Son”)
• “Angels Fall” (1982)
• “Burn This” (1987)
• “Redwood Curtain” (1993)
• “Book of Days” (2000)