Lanford Wilson

Commissioned by the Circle Repertory Company, Burn This first appeared at the Mark Taper Forum in Los angeles in 1987 to near-universal praise. Set in the bohemian art world of downtown New York, this vivid and challenging drama explores the spiritual and emotional isolation of Anna and Pale, two outcasts who meet in the wake of the accidental death by drowning of a mutual friend. Their determined struggle toward emotional honesty and liberation--by no means guaranteed at the play's ambiguous end--exemplifies the strength, humor, and complexity of all of Lanford Wilson's work and confirms his standing as one of America's greatest living playwrights.Lanford Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri, in 1938 and attended the University of Chicago. A founding member of the Circle Repertory Company in New York, he has seen many of his plays produced in theaters all over the United States and abroad. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and two Obies.

A group of friends who came of age in the sixties have a reunion in an old Missouri farmhouse, where their reminiscences reveal shattered hopes, buried resentments, lost dreams, and the unhealed trauma of the Vietnam War.

Winner of 1980 Pulitzer Prize for DramaThe scene is the ornate, deserted Victorian boathouse on the Talley place in Lebanon, Missouri; the time 1944. Matt Friedman, an accountant from St. Louis, has arrived to plead his love to Sally Talley, the susceptible, but uncertain daughter of the family. Bookish, erudite, totally honest and delightfully funny, Matt refuses to accept Sally's rebuffs and her fears that her family would never approve of their marriage. Charming and indomitable, he gradually overcomes her defenses, telling his innermost secrets to his loved one and, in return, learning hers as well. Gradually he awakens Sally to the possibilities of a life together until, in the final, touching moments of the play, it is clear that they are two kindred spirits who have truly found each other two "lame ducks" who, in their union, will find a wholeness rare in human relationships.

The guests at a rundown hotel meet and interact with one another over the course of a day.

As Martin Gottfried comments, "It is a simple one. A mystery, really. A man has been murdered. The mystery is, who he is, who murdered him and what were the circumstances? And to solve it, Wilson looks at the outsides and insides of his tiny, Middle Western town. He looks at a middle-aging woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her cafe. He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother, who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil and headed for blood-spilling. He looks at a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled girl. But Wilson sees far more than this. He is grasping the very fabric of Bible Belt America, with its catchword morality ("virgin," "God-fearing") and its capability for the vicious. He senses the rhythm of its life and the cruelty it can impose. He understands the speech patterns of its loveless gossips, its sex-hungry boys, its compassionless preachers, its car-conscious blondes." In the end his portrait of Eldritch is full length, and the truth of its revelations will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed and the play has ended.

Acclaimed by Frank Rich as "a writer who illuminates the deepest dramas of American life with poetry and compassion," Lanford Wilson is one of the most esteemed contemporary American playwrights of our time. Nowhere is this more evident than in his latest play, Book of Days, which has won the Best Play Award from the American Theater Critics Association. Book of Days is set in a small town dominated by a cheese plant, a fundamentalist church, and a community theater. When the owner of the cheese plant dies mysteriously in a hunting accident, Ruth, his bookkeeper, suspects murder. Cast as Joan of Arc in a local production of George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, Ruth takes on the attributes of her fictional character and launches into a one-woman campaign to see justice done. In Book of Days, Lanford Wilson uses note-perfect language to create characters who are remarkable both for their comic turns and for their enormous depth. "Mr. Wilson's cosmic consciousness, intense moral concern, sense of human redemption and romantic effusion have climbed to a new peak." -- Alvin Klein, The New York Times; "A significant addition to the Lanford Wilson canon . . . his best work since Fifth of July . . . Book of Days manages to combine Wilson's signature character-based whimsy with an atypically strong narrative book and politically charged underpinnings." -- Chris Jones, Variety; "Book of Days is lively storytelling by one of our best playwrights." -- Lawrence DeVine, Detroit Free Press.

Book by Lanford Wilson

"Lanford Wilson is the rare dramatist, witty and humorous, who sees all his characters from the inside… Balm is life itself trapped in a play."-- New YorkBalm in Gilead and Other Plays features Lanford Wilson's first full-length play. It takes place in upper Manhattan at a greasy, slum diner, Frank's cafe, where drug addicts, sex works, and petty criminals come to escape their boredom and suffering.

Book by Lanford Wilson, Wilson, Lanford

At seventeen, Alan visits the California home of his father and his father's former mistress turned wife. His father's life now centers around his two young sons, a tiresome job at an aircraft plant, and two teenage girls who are boarded with the family by the state. Alan has come expecting to go to school full time and work part time at the plant, having accepted his father's encouragement to do so. But the older man is incapable of honesty, least of all emotional honesty, and his lies about school are worth about as much as his lies about love. In the end, his cruelty, insecurity and lechery bring on an inevitable collision that destroys all that the father and son had hoped for. Alan is driven away once more, embittered by the knowledge that he must live without the father he so desperately wants and needs.

LUDLOW FAIR. In words of the Village Voice, this ".is a bedtime story about two girl roommates. Rachael is glamorous, fast-living, sometimes lost in her own self-dramatizations; Agnes is plain, matter-of-fact, her shyness masked by a kooky personality. The play is ostensibly about Rachael: She turned her latest boyfriend in to the police when he stole from her, and now she is remorseful-now she decides she is in love with him. Agnes tries to cheer her up with wisecracks, then tries to rekindle her self-awareness, and finally Rachael goes to sleep. Agnes is left alone, thinking about her lunch date with the boss' disappointing son tomorrow. And suddenly it is her play, the realist is the true romantic. Agnes' unprepossessing but real emotions outweigh Rachel's trumped-up, self-indulgent flourishes, and suddenly the play is simple and moving." (2 women.) HOME FREE! Lawrence and Joanna, a brother and sister in their mid-twenties, have cut themselves off from the world "outside," living in a cluttered playroom which they share with two imaginary companions, "Edna" and "Claypone." Surrounded by toys, including a brightly colored miniature Ferris wheel, they have created an atmosphere of almost suffocating intimacy and remove, where play becomes the business of life and reality an alien force to be kept at bay. But life intrudes all the same, and their fantasies have betrayed them into Joanna's pregnancy. Yet even this cruel irony can only be dealt with in almost antic, unreal terms, as though it too were but a facet of the dream world Lawrence and Joanna have constructed about themselves. They continue to play and talk idly of future plans-until the birth pangs begin and their house ofillusion comes crashing down. But still Lawrence cannot leave, cannot face the world beyond their door. Instead he sends "Edna" for the doctor, and as Joanna's life ebbs away he holds her hand and talks of the new toy he has made for her and hidden away in their Surprise Box of secret treasures. (1 man, 1 woman.)"

Despite his hard work to make the family garment factory into a success, Eldon Talley receives little respect from his father, Calvin, or his eldest son, Buddy

In Lanford Wilsonâ s moving and powerful play an adolescent Eurasian girlâ the child of a union between an American GI and a Vietnamese woman, adopted by a wealthy California couple and obsessive in her search for her fatherâ is drawn to the redwood forests of northern California, where thousands of Vietnam veterans have taken refuge to escape the harsh realities of life in America.

A well-known play written by Pulitzer Prize winner Lanford Wilson.

Book by Lanford Wilson

1. Home Free!2. The Madness Of Lady Bright3. LudlowFair4. This Is The Rill Speaking5. Days Ahead6. Wandering7. Stoop8. Sextet (Yes)9. Ikke, Ikke, Nye, Nye, Nye10. Victory On Mrs. Dandywine's Island11. The Great Nebula In Orion12. The Family Continues13. Brontosaurus14. Thymus Vulgaris15. Breakfast At The Track16. Say de Kooning17. A Betrothal18. Abstinence19. A Poster Of The Cosmos20. The Moonshot Tape21. Eukiah

Book by Wilson, Lanford

The monologue DAYS AHEAD portrays the fraught psyche of a fastidious little man as he confronts the memory of an early love which he perceives as a dusty, crumbling wall through which he must dig. (1 man.) THE MADNESS OF LADY BRIGHT traces the mental breakdown of Lesley Bright, an aging homosexual whose past returns to haunt him with the emptiness of the choices he made. (2 men, 1 woman.) THIS IS THE RILL SPEAKING, A Play for Voices, is a poetic, mosaic-style evocation of small-town life told through multiple voices which shift and blend from identity to identity. (3 men, 3 women.) SAY DE KOONING pits an artist and two female lovers against the very strains of modern life they hoped to escape by summering at the beach. Not even there, though, can they avoid the pitfalls of their own demanding personalities.(1 man, 2 women.)

"Mr. Wilson handles the collage technique so beautifully that we leave convinced no other method would have served half so well. This reviewer liked Rimers for its fluidity, for its language, for its almost musical sense of pattern."--The New York Times

The fourth volume of Smith and Kraus' publication of the complete works of playwright Lanford Wilson. The plays in this volume include Fifth of July, Talley's Folly (the winner of the 1980 Pulitzer Prize) and Talley and Son. This collection will include introductory notes by the playwright, original cast and production information. From the New York Times: One of the rewards of the plays in the unfolding Talley Cycle is our knowledge of the interrelated, reflected worlds. When a character opens the door in Talley & Son, we hear the sound of crickets and dance music--and we remember that as a counterpoint to the bickering in the main house, Sally (in Talley's Folly) is down at the boathouse affirming her love for Matt Friedman. Turn the set around and walk through a Wilson time warp and we would see the family years later in the marvelous 5th of July.

The second volume of Smith and Kraus' publication of the complete works of Pulitzer publication of the complete works of Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson. Plays are Balm in Gilead, Rimers of Eldritch, Gingham Dog, Lemon Sky, and The Sand Castle.

The third volume of Smith and Kraus' publication of Wilson's complete works. The plays in this volume include: "The Hotel Baltimore," "Serenading Louie," "The Mound Builders," and "Angels Fall."

THE GREAT NEBULA IN ORION. This fascinating and brilliantly inventive play details the chance meeting, after many years, of two girlhood friends. One has "married well" and the other has achieved a successful career, but, for both, as their poignant and telling conversation reveals, there is an aching emptiness beneath the elegant veneer of their lives. (2 women.) THE FAMILY CONTINUES. A haunting play of memory, written in a stream-of-consciousness contrapuntal style, which evokes the panorama of a young mans life birth, army service, marriage, job, parenthood, old age within the brief span of its action. Highly innovative in its theatricality, the play illuminates not only the continuity of human life, but also the poignancy and bitterness that can infuse it. (5 men, 5 women, flexible casting.) IKKE, IKKE, NYE, NYE, NYE. This explosively funny and ingenious farce deals with what might have been a seduction but while she is all for it (despite her feeble protests) he has eyes only for her telephone. And what he can't say to her face, floods out readily on the phone, with hilarious and devastating results. (1 man, 1 woman.) VICTORY ON MRS. DANDYWINE'S ISLAND. A high-style spoof on comedy in the Oscar Wilde mode, which keeps a delightfully straight face while poking fun at the stilted behavior of its very proper characters. The scene is the sitting room of Mrs. Dandywine's elegant summer "cottage," where things take a flustered turn at the unexpected arrival of a man who, of course, must be up to no good. (2 men, 3 women.)"

Liz Barnard is an anthropologist studying West Coast gangs for behavior similar to African tribes. Her son, Don, is a homosexual Episcopal minister whose parishioners are poor and many sick with AIDS. Liz's daughter, Barbara, is a gifted sculptress whose current breakthrough show launches a stellar career. Barbara lives with Ian, a brilliant young astronomer and popular university professor who, along with his colorful colleague Mickey, stumbles upon a spectacular discovery at the edge of the galaxy. They want to study the find further, but the chairman of their department, Carl Conklin White, a by-the-book administrator, snatches up this startling find before all the facts are in. Along with this discovery, Ian and Barbara find that despite all precautions, Barbara is pregnant. Having agreed to no children, Barbara prepares for an abortion, but Ian wants to hold off as he has new thoughts about children and carrying on the human race. The mysteries of the universe and of human and artistic creation begin to mix for Ian and his friends. But when Barbara has the abortion, Ian becomes a person he never expected, and in front of friends and family, he attacks Barbara. His actions change everyone around him, mirroring the change in life when discovery leads the way.

THE MOONSHOT TAPE. Having come home to visit her mother, who has been placed in a nursing home, Diane, now a well-known writer, is being interviewed for the local newspaper. Only she speaks. Her remarks are in answer to such questions as where she gets the ideas for her stories; whether her youth in Mountain Grove influenced her work; and why she decided to leave home. At first obliging and matter-of-fact, Diane gradually begins to reveal more than her questioner might have bargained for a childhood marred by the loss of her father and her mother's coldness; the promiscuity she was driven to in search of the love and concern that were denied her at home; and, most devastating of all, the molestation by her stepfather which shaped her character indelibly and led to the harrowing event she describes at the end of her recital. To the world at large Diane is someone who has shaken off the dust of Mountain Grove and has gone on to bigger and better things. To herself, however, it is painfully clear that she is what her earlier life ordained because no one ever really leaves the place from which they came. (1 woman.) A POSTER OF THE COSMOS. The place is a Manhattan police station, where a young man, Tom, is being interrogated after having created a disturbance at the hospital where his friend and lover has just died from AIDS. Although only Tom speaks, it is clear that the flood of memories that bursts forth is triggered by the uncomprehending questions of the policemen who now watch him in stony silence. At first he is defensive and impatient with his questioners' inability to understand his behavior, but gradually, as he recalls his time with his lost friend, the depth of their feeling andcommitment for each other emerges. Recalling a host of "little" details, Tom creates a telling portrait of two human beings who must come to understand themselves as individuals before they can comprehend their relationship to each other much less their position relative to society at large. Sometimes poignant, sometimes harrowing, Tom's deeply felt words also make it clear that the guilt and remorse he feels should, in truth, be shared by all who do not try to understand or pledge themselves to overcome this terrible pestilence has brought so much loss and suffering to our times. (1 man.)"

In a ramshackle cantina in Los Alamos, New Mexico, on the night of July 15, 1945, four people await the test of the atomic bomb. Each of them is connected directly or indirectly with the top-secret Trinity project, and over the course of the evening the horror of what is about to be unleashed on the world begins to dawn on them. As tensions mount, and questions of science, religion and morality collide, Rain Dance makes palpable the thrilling and terrifying journey of our first steps into the atomic age.

Schuyler Browne and his friends, Josh, Ann and Mary, gather for the spring at Schuyler's family's Hampton home. Schuyler, a trust-fund kid from wealthy lineage, doesn't yet know what to do with his life. Josh, very into computers, is on the verge of making millions on a stock market deal done over the Internet. Ann, a would-be dancer, is turned down for a grant and is fearful of becoming a blue collar worker. Mary is a business manager about to open her own company, and the one to open the group to a new member, Chuck, a local carpenter working for her. As the spring passes, the friends begin to clash as all their problems and futures grow. Growing more neurotic, Ann spends her time cooking even as she continues her work in a nearby shop. Tempers fly when Schuyler insults Chuck, and Mary and Josh in turn chide Schuyler for being a snob. More time passes, and Josh, with some of his new money, makes a large contribution to the director of a dance troupe hoping Ann can have a featured role, but his kindness backfires when she is fired on opening night. Schuyler's feud with Chuck fizzles, but Schuyler's father informs them all they may no longer live in the house since, come September, he has rented it out. When the time comes to leave, the friends vow to hang onto their meager livings and to their family of friends, but no one really knows how. Schuyler wants to hurt his father and announces his intention to open a restaurant with Ann as the cook, but it is Josh who rescues the group, with his vow to spend millions on a new house, where they all can, again, be together.