 |
BY LUCIA MAURO
It’s a challenge to pin down Lanford Wilson these days. The revolutionary American playwright has been traveling around the country to accept five separate lifetime achievement awards for his multitiered contributions to modern drama. Plus the scope of his work is being revisited and reexamined nation-wide.
The Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Mich., recently closed the world premiere of Wilson’s latest work, Rain Dance. New York’s Signature Theatre has dedicated its upcoming season to Wilson’s plays. Closer to home, Roadworks Productions’ pungent staging of Serenading Louie runs through June 23 at Victory Gardens; and Northlight Theatre will present Talley’s Folley next season.
But despite the playwright’s frenetic schedule, he agreed to generously share his thoughts on pivotal moments in his prolific career and his views on writing.
"Oh, I just finished a crossword puzzle, so I’ve got plenty of time," says Wilson long-distance from his Sag Harbor, Long Island home. "At this moment, I’m not very busy. But I have been traveling a lot. And I hate traveling. I also don’t fly. So it usually takes me longer to get around."
What follows is an hour-long riff on key events that shaped his voice as a writer.
His longtime director-collaborator Marshall W. Mason believes Wilson’s work encapsulates the American experience from the 1960s on: "This is how life was in our century, and future generations will savor the song," writes Mason in "Lanford Wilson: 21 Short Plays" (Smith & Kraus Publishers).
When asked why his plays are being scrutinized and celebrated now, Wilson replies in a characteristically unpretentious manner.
"I don’t think the revival is much of anything except that it was time," he says. "Many of the plays being revived are the ones I wrote in the '70s. That was 30 years ago. There’s been some distance. So people might be finding that this is a good time to re-examine those plays."
Wilson was born 64 years ago in Lebanon, Missouri. He began to pursue a career in playwriting after taking a course titled "What Is a Play?" at the University of Chicago in 1959. He thought it wise to move to New York City shortly after graduation.
"I left Chicago because there was no theatre, which is hard to believe," Wilson explains. "Of course, you had touring companies, but nothing like the abundance and level of professionalism that exists in Chicago today. So playwrights really only could go to New York. I found that the quality of my work improved immensely in New York because I was in this incubator of creativity.
"Today, all playwrights have to do is hang around a theatre long enough until someone reads their script. A good strategy is to work at a theatre, you know, like do things around the office. Don’t tell them you’re a writer. Then, sooner or later, someone will ask you what you do, and you hand them a script."
In the Big Apple, Wilson quickly became involved with a group of artists at the Café Cino, one of many Off-Off-Broadway coffee houses that presented edgy, avant-garde works. Wilson served not only as playwright, but also as director, actor and designer. His first play, So Long at the Fair, was produced at the Café Cino in 1963.
"At that time," reflects Wilson, "I recall telling someone that I was a playwright, and he asked me if I had ever heard of Café Cino–which I had not. So I went to check it out. When I arrived, someone immediately asked me what sign I was. I said I was Aries rising, and this particular artist began speaking in an obscure new language–every other word was Ella. Everyone talked like that at Café Cino. That’s the kind of wild atmosphere it was."
Another of Wilson’s scripts to be produced at the café was a one-act titled Home Free (1964), which centered on the relationship of two incestuous siblings. During the run of Home Free, Wilson met Mason, a young director in the Café Cino group. Mason would become a critical figure in his development as a groundbreaking playwright.
But they did not hit it off immediately. Besides criticizing Wilson’s re-write of Home Free, Mason initially dismissed the playwright’s plot for Serenading Louie. Wilson claims he was so devastated that he didn’t write a word of Serenading Louie for over a year.
"Marshall learned to be very enthusiastic about everything I proposed and wrote," shares Wilson with a soft chuckle. "From the time Circle Rep was founded, I gave Marshall each page as I wrote it. He knew that the only way we could get through it was if he expressed a false enthusiasm for everything."
But what sounds like an egotistical arrangement on Wilson’s part evolved into a more elastic and productive collaborative experience. At Circle Repertory, which Wilson co-founded with Mason and other artists in 1969, Wilson wrote for specific actors who were intensely involved in the creative process. They did several readings before audiences, who would share their critiques (which Wilson did not reject).
"The actors at Circle Rep were so closely connected to their characters," the playwright remarks. "They knew their characters by the time I wrote the second act. In fact, they knew their characters a year before they knew what their characters did. It was a very organic process."
Wilson enthuses that the formation of Circle Repertory "changed everything." He suddenly had a home base and a group of committed actors for whom he could write challenging parts. The company’s first major success was Hot L Baltimore (1973), the story of a group of drifters, prostitutes and aging residents in run-down hotel. The play, directed by Mason, ran for 1,100 performances and eventually transferred to Broadway.
Other Wilson-Mason collaborations include The Mound Builders (1975), in which an archaeological dig sets the stage for a meditation on a university scientist’s past and present; Serenading Louie (1970), which focuses on two young suburban couples facing the unhappiness at the heart of their marriages; Angels Fall (1982), in which a group of strangers come together in a small mission church in a remote part of New Mexico to face their own mortality in the wake of a possible nuclear accident; and Talley’s Folly (1979), for which Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.
Backtracking for a moment, in 1965, Wilson gave Mason a copy of Balm in Gilead, his 56-character masterpiece that incorporated simultaneous scenes and overlapping dialogue delivered by societal outcasts. That year, Balm in Gilead opened under Mason’s direction at the Café LaMama.
Of Balm in Gilead, Wilson remembers, "It was the first play that required me to go to a casting call. My other plays were written for specific actors. It was a thrilling experience to watch Marshall cast that play."
Wilson has often been compared to Tennessee Williams, William Inge and Lillian Hellman. His plays usually explore themes of alienation, identity crises and crumbling illusions. Lemon Sky (1970), which Wilson describes as "completely autobiographical," tells the story of a young man who moves in with the father who abandoned him and his mother when he was only five years old. Any attempts at reconciliation prove futile. After learning that his son is gay, the father throws him out of the house.
The range of his work is so vast, it would take several lifetimes to dissect the motivations behind every play. But Wilson agrees to talk about a few plays.
"Each play takes shape differently each time," acknowledges Wilson. "But I sort of say, after I get an idea, 'Oh good, THAT play. I was always going to write about that.’"
He continues, "With Fifth of July, I knew I had to write about a Vietnam vet who was so alone in the world. The character is based on one of my students. I taught for a short while. I knew I had to write something about the damn war and that nothing came of our idealism."
During the interview, Wilson frequently specifies that he "responds" to issues of our times, rather than merely "addresses" them. A few years ago, his multifaceted Midwest-set play, Book of Days, received an astute and moving staging at the Purple Rose Theatre, which commissioned Wilson to write the play.
"It took me forever to come up with the story. It wasn’t until I was visiting Springfield, Missouri [near his home town] that I discovered these Christian reading rooms on every block. The intolerance and self-satisfaction that had come to my town and the breast-beating glory just appalled me. It made me focus on the whole Christian Right thing."
From Balm in Gilead to Burn This, Wilson’s plays have become household names. But, when talking about the works that remain closest to his heart, Wilson cites two that were not huge box-office successes.
"They would be The Mound Builders and Sympathetic Magic," he says. "Both plays took quite a while to write, but they were exactly the plays I set out to write. They didn’t worm out from under me."
Wilson’s awards include, among others, the Vernon Rice Award for Rimers of Eldritch (1965); the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Outer Circle Award and an Obie for Hot L Baltimore (1973); and another Obie for The Mound Builders (1975). He learned Russian in order to translate the works of one of his favorite authors, Anton Chekhov. He also has until August to complete his adaptation of Ibsen’s The Ghosts, a project commissioned by Mason.
A few years ago, Vanguard Theatre Ensemble in Fullerton, Calif., presented Fifth of July. Director Amy Luskey-Barth wrote an illuminating description of Wilson’s talents in her director’s note:
"Lanford Wilson is often compared to Chekhov in his dramatically compelling use of language. His deft, witty and brilliantly orchestrated dialogue has a touch-and-go quality. Skating across the surface of monumental truths, Wilson astonishes us with his richly textured metaphors and thematic layering. His tightly woven style, rhythm and pace are at times humorous and at times devastating.
"One of a trilogy of plays chronicling the Talley family, Fifth of July takes place in 1977 in Lebanon, Missouri. Both the literal and figurative wounds of the Vietnam era are still fresh in the minds of those who have gathered at the Talley farm to dispose of the cremated ashes of a member of the family. Former Berkley roommates and 60’s activists, these characters must finally take responsibility for their individual choices and actions, face lost dreams and regrets, and choose to bury the past and recommit to the future. Ultimately what emerges is the portrait of a loving, flawed family whose core, in spite of everything, is surviving."
Before he signs off to prepare for a dinner engagement, Wilson admits that writing-wise, "I am pretty barren right now–although I have a whiff of an idea, but it hasn’t grabbed me yet."
He then goes on to share the idea about a young girl who leaves home to join the carnival, where she meets a young man who was born into the carnival life.
"That’s about as far as I’ve got," Wilson continues. "But I’m thinking of having these carnies watching the State of the Union address and laughing their asses off because they know every twist of phrase and every scam."
Ultimately, Wilson trusts his characters to guide him.
"You live within these characters while you’re writing," he says. "And your characters tell you where to go."
For more detailed information on Lanford Wilson and his plays, theatre artists can read the playwright’s forthright descriptions of his process in a series of "Contemporary Playwrights" books published by Smith and Kraus. They include: "Lanford Wilson: Collected Plays 1965-70"; "Lanford Wilson: Collected Works: 1970-83"; "Lanford Wilson: Collected Full-Length Plays — Fifth of July, Talley’s Folly, Talley and Son"; and "Lanford Wilson: 21 Short Plays.