ABOUT THIS BOOK

Before Lanford Wilson became a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, with such celebrated productions as The Hot l Baltimore, Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly, and Burn This, he wrote dozens of short stories and poems, many of which take place in the 1950s, small-town Missouri where he grew up. This selection of Wilson’s early work, written between 1955 and 1967 when he was between the ages of 18 and 30, provides a rare look at a young writer developing his style. The stories explore many of the themes Wilson later took up in the theater, such as sexual identity and the rupture of societies and families. These never-before-published works—part of the manuscript collection donated by Wilson to the University of Missouri—shed light on the roots of some of America’s best-loved plays and are accomplished and evocative works in their own right.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

David Crespy is Professor of Playwriting, Acting, and Dramatic Literature at the University of Missouri. He is the author of many plays and two previous books, founder and co-director of the Writing for Performance Program, and founding artistic director of the Missouri Playwrights Workshop and the Mizzou New Play Series. He lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Full bio: David Crespy founded MU's Writing for Performance program and serves its Co-Director. He is the founding Artistic Director of MU's Missouri Playwrights Workshop, the Mizzou New Play Series, and Summer Rep's Comedies-in-Concert Series. His areas of research and teaching include playwriting, acting, dramatic literature, and theatre history. He has a special scholarly focus on dreamwork for playwriting and the plays of Edward Albee. He holds a BFA in Acting from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts (where he studied with William Esper), an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas, and a PhD in Theatre History, Theory, and Dramatic Literature from the City University of New York. David currently serves as the President of the Edward Albee Society, and has served as the Dramatist Guild Field Representative for the state of Missouri, and the resident playwright for First Run Theatre in St. Louis, MO. David's plays have been developed and produced at theatres across the US including the Cherry Lane Theatre, River Union Stage, NJ Dramatists, Playwrights Theatre of NJ, Nebraska Repertory Theatre, Primary Stages, The Cherry Lane Theatre, The Playwrights Center, HB Playwrights Foundation, Austin Melodrama, Jewish Repertory Theatre, Talking Horse Theatre, Stages St. Louis, First Run Theatre (St. Louis), and Creative Theatre Unlimited.

David is the former Region V National Playwriting Program Chair through the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, and hasserved as chair of the Playwriting Program for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the Playwrights Symposium of the Mid-America Theatre Conference. His major plays include William & Bettie, Parabolis, Men Dancing, The Queens Orphans, Seven Were Hanged, Tekìya, Beshert; Or the Jewish Dating Cycle, Houseblend; Or Coffeecake Tsimmis; Or My Bubby & Zeyde Are From Outer Space!, and The Sudden Glide. His plays have been finalists in the David Mark Cohen Award, the Playwrights Conference of the O'Neill Theatre Center, and the National Ten-Minute Play Festival of Actors Theatre of Louisville. He has been a featured playwright and Director of the Play Lab for the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, Nebraska and the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska. Dr. Crespy is the recipient of the 21st Century Playwrights Festival, the 2011 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Gold Medallion, the 2010 Region V Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Road Warrior Award, the University of Missouri Summer Research Fellowship, Provosts Research Leave, and Excellence in Education Award. Over 60 of his playwriting students have been recognized as regional finalists with the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF) and 20 have received national recognition through KCACTF as well. Dr. Crespy has been instrumental in bringing major American playwrights, scholars and theatre artists to the University of Missouri, including Edward Albee, Tony Kushner, John Guare, Lanford Wilson, Kim Marra, William Yellow Robe, Mac Wellman, Robert Schanke, Lynn Nottage, Romulus Linney, Rick Sordelet, Caridad Svich, Elaine Romero, Lindsey Alley Elizabeth Ashley, Marshall Mason, among many others.

His publications include The Off-Off Broadway Explosion, (Watson-Guptill, 2003), his book about New York's off-off Broadway in the 1960s (with a foreword by Edward Albee). His articles have appeared in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre History Studies, New England Theatre Journal, Latin American Theatre Review, The Dramatist, Slavic and East European Performance and www.glbtq.com. His plays and essays may be found in Perfect Ten (Gary Garrison, ed., Heinemann), Playwriting Master Class (Michael Wright, ed., Heineman), Monologues for Men by Men (Gary Garrison, Ed., Heinemann), Angels in American Theatre (Robert Schanke, ed., Southern Illinois University Press), and The Influence of Tennessee Williams (Philip Kolin, Ed., McFarland). Dr. Crespy has been working with Edward Albee as a scholar since 1994, and his most recent book is Richard Barr: The Playwrights' Producer (SIU Press, March 2013), about Broadway producer, Richard Barr, the producer of Mr. Albee's plays and former president of the League of American Theatres and Producers (with a foreword and afterword by Edward Albee). His current book projects include Lanford Wilson: Selected Short Stories and Poetry (with Jonathan Thirkield), Dreamwrighting: Dreamwork for Dramatic Writing For Stage & Screen, and the third volume of New Perspectives on Edward Albee Studies. His current play projects include Wallace's Line, a play that explores the tenuous line between science and faith; Stars in the Sky, A Civil War Romance, which is a new musical (written with music composed by Emeritus Professor James M. Miller) based on the letters of William and Bettie Hill, separated during the Civil War in Missouri, and Gehinnom; or, The Darkness of our Blessing, which is a dramatization of the events surrounding a controversial charismatic Jewish leader, and The Sad Girl, a new play about a soothsayer, murder, and insidious libidinous influence of board games.

REVIEWS

“A significant addition to the published work of Lanford Wilson, illuminating his work as a playwright and enlarging the scope of his work as a writer, adding a substantial group of stories and poems to Midwest, and particularly Missouri regional literature, and adding an important group of stories to the coming-of-age and LGBTQ literature of the 1950s.”—Brenda Murphy, Professor Emeritus of English, University of Connecticut, author of The Theatre of Tennessee Williams

“Hail David Crespy for his lovingly edited treasure trove of the early work of the great Lanford Wilson. This collection, an amazing eye into the heart and mind of this essential 20th century playwright, is a feast for every student of American drama. These pages, far from being juvenilia, are like walking into a hall of mirrors where we see the great plays illuminated by their roots. An invaluable work.”—John Guare, playwright, author of The House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation, and A Free Man of Color

“Lanford Wilson wrote several of the great plays of our time, mixing a keen appreciation of human failings and hopes with often raunchy humor and an effortless lyricism. These qualities are front and center in the early stories and poems featured in this engaging book - fine company in themselves and intriguing for the promise they show of a master to come.”—Jeffrey Sweet, playwright, author of The Value of Names and Kunstler

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents - Lanford Wilson: Early Stories, Sketches, and Poems

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction by David Crespy

SECTION 1: Six Stories
A Section of Orange
Goodbye Sparta
Miss Misty
The Beautiful Children
The Polar Bear
The Canary (A Fairy Tale)

SECTION 2: Travels to and from the City
The Train to Washington
The Water Commissioner
Fish Kite
SECTION 3: Sketches of Town Life
The Rimers of Eldritch
Green Grow the Rushes
Chalk Eye
Drift

SECTION 4: Sketches of City Life
Mama
Fuzz on Orion’s Sword
Uptown in Snow
Dear Mr. Goldberg
Doors

SECTION 5: Poems
Outside Tulsa
Mountains
Orange Grove
Flower Box
Marigold
Oakwood Gothic
[Well, there she is, after all]
Cathedral of St. Paul
The Street Artist
Village Walking Rhyme
On a Day of Crisis
Fifth Avenue was quiet
Winter
So the Sky
Lullaby
Lullaby (2)
If Yours Cannot Be
I Saw All the Workers in the Field at Noon
Why When I Love You
Notes on a Poem for Bill
Noel
The great-hearted Dean
A Love Story about the Next Best Thing

Afterword by Marshall W. Mason
Editorial Note

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