Awards & Winners

Lanford Wilson

Date of Birth 13-April-1937
Place of Birth Lebanon
(Laclede County, Missouri, United States of America)
Nationality United States of America
Also know as Lanford Eugene Wilson
Profession Playwright, Author, Screenwriter
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement, producing his earliest plays in New York at the Caffe Cino in 1964. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980 and was elected in 2001 to the 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 an Obie Award. Wilson was raised in Missouri by his mother, but in 1956 he moved to California, where he worked and attended college. There, Wilson lived with his father, who did not accept Wilson's homosexuality, and so, in 1957, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a graphic artist and studied playwriting. In 1962, he moved to New York and began to write plays for Off-Off-Broadway theatres. His 1964 short play, The Madness of Lady Bright, was his first significant success and led to further works treating gay identity and other social and romantic issues throughout the 1960s. In 1969, he was a co-founder of Circle Repertory Company, for whom he wrote many plays in the 1970s. His 1973 play, The Hot L Baltimore, was the company's first major hit with both audiences and critics; its Off-Broadway run exceeded 1,000 performances.

Awards by Lanford Wilson

Check all the awards nominated and won by Lanford Wilson.

1997


Obie Award for Playwriting
Honored for : Sympathetic magic

1983


Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement
(Obie Award for Sustained Achievement)

Nominations 1983 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Tony Award for Best Play Angels Fall

1981


Nominations 1981 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Tony Award for Best Play Fifth of July

1980


Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Honored for : Talley's Folly

Nominations 1980 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Tony Award for Best Play Talley's Folly
Pulitzer Prize for Drama Talley's Folly
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play Talley's Folly

1979


Nominations 1979 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play Talley's Folly

1978


Nominations 1978 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play Fifth of July

1975


Obie Award for Playwriting
Honored for : The Mound Builders

1974


Nominations 1974 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Primetime Emmy Award for Best Writing In Drama - Original Teleplay Playhouse 90
The Migrants
Primetime Emmy Award for Best Writing In Drama - Original Teleplay The Migrants

1973


Obie Award for Best New American Play
Honored for : The Hot l Baltimore
(Best American Play)

1967


Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Playwright
Honored for : The Rimers of Eldritch

Nominations 1967 »

Award Nominated Nominated Work
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Playwright The Rimers of Eldritch