兰福德·威尔逊

兰福德·威尔逊（Lanford Wilson，1937年4月13日—2011年3月24日）是一位美国剧作家。 1972年，威尔逊获颁古根海姆奖。 他又于1980年获得普利策戏剧奖，并于 2001年入选美国戏剧名人堂。 2004年，威尔逊入选美国艺术暨文学学会。他还获得过一次戏剧桌奖。

威尔逊于 2011 年 3 月 24 日去世，享年 73 岁，死于肺炎并发症。

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.

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. In 1969, he co-founded the Circle Repertory Company with theatre director Marshall W. Mason. He wrote many plays for the Circle Repertory in the 1970s. His 1973 play The Hot l Baltimore was the company's first major success with both audiences and critics. The off-Broadway production exceeded 1,000 performances.

His play Fifth of July was first produced at Circle Repertory in 1978. He received a Tony Award nomination for its Broadway production, which opened in 1980. A prequel to Fifth of July called Talley's Folly (opened 1979 at Circle Repertory) opened on Broadway before Fifth of July and won Wilson the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and his first Tony nomination. Burn This (1987) was another Broadway success. Wilson also wrote the libretti for several operas.

Childhood and education

Wilson was born to Ralph Eugene and Violetta Tate Wilson in Lebanon, Missouri. After his parents divorced when he was 5, he moved with his mother to Springfield, Missouri, where they lived until she remarried. When he was 11, his mother married Walt E. Lenhard, a farmer from Ozark, Missouri, and they both moved in with him. He had two half-brothers, John and Jim, and one stepsister, Judy. He attended high school in Ozark and developed a love for film and art. As a child, Wilson enjoyed writing short stories and going to see plays performed at Southwest Missouri State College (now Missouri State University). A production of Brigadoon had a particularly resounding effect on Wilson, saying that "after that town came back to life on stage, movies didn't stand a chance". He developed an interest in acting and performed in his high school plays, including the role of Tom in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

After graduating from Ozark High School in 1955, Wilson began his collegiate studies at Southwest Missouri State College. In 1956, he moved to San Diego, where his father had relocated after his parents' divorce. He studied art and art history at San Diego State College as well as worked as a riveter at the Ryan Aircraft Plant. His reunion with his father was difficult, but the relationship improved in later years, and Wilson based his play Lemon Sky on their relationship. Wilson left college and moved to Chicago in 1957, where he worked as a graphic artist for an advertising firm. During this time, Wilson realized that the short stories he had always enjoyed writing would be more effective as plays, and began to study playwriting at the University of Chicago extension program.

Early work (1962–1968)

In 1962, Wilson moved to Greenwich Village in New York City. He worked in odd jobs, such as a temporary typist, a reservations clerk at Americana Hotel, at the complaint desk of a furniture store, and at a dishwashing job where a co-worker incorrectly called him "Lance". After that, Wilson's friends all called him by that name. Wilson eventually worked for the subscription office of the New York Shakespeare Festival.