Craig Lucas | |
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 Lucas in 2019 | |
| Born | April 30, 1951 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, actor, playwright, director |
| Education | Boston University (BFA) |
| Genre | Playwrighting, screenwriting |
Craig Lucas (born April 30, 1951) is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.
Born on April 30, 1951, he was found abandoned in a car in Atlanta, Georgia. Lucas was adopted when he was eight months old by a conservative Pennsylvania couple. His father was an FBI agent; his mother was a painter. She was born Jewish but suppressed the identity, which Lucas relates in his storytelling. [1] He graduated in 1969 from Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lucas became interested in the political left and discovered an attraction toward men. He is openly gay, [1] and recalls that his coming out made it possible for him to develop as a playwright and as a person.
In 1973, Lucas left Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and creative writing. His mentor Anne Sexton urged him to move to New York City to become a playwright. He worked in many day jobs while performing in Broadway musicals including Shenandoah , On the Twentieth Century , Rex , and Sweeney Todd . Stephen Sondheim later told him he was a better writer than actor. [2]
Lucas met Norman René in 1979. Their first collaboration was Marry Me a Little in 1981. The two wrote a script incorporating songs that had been written for but discarded from Stephen Sondheim musicals, and René also directed. They followed this with the plays Missing Persons (1981) and Blue Window (1984); Three Postcards (1987), an original musical by Lucas and Craig Carnelia; and another play, Reckless (1983). [3] In 1990, they had their biggest commercial and critical success with Prelude to a Kiss . They also collaborated for the feature film Longtime Companion (1990), the 1992 film adaptation of Prelude to a Kiss with Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan, and the 1995 film version of Reckless with Mia Farrow and Mary-Louise Parker.
Following his early work on romantic comedies, Lucas began to write more serious works about AIDS, including The Singing Forest (not to be confused with the film of the same name) and The Dying Gaul, the latter of which was made into a film that Lucas also directed. Lucas also wrote the book for the musical The Light in the Piazza , [4] and directed the world premiere at the Intiman Theater in Seattle. The Lincoln Center production, directed by Bartlett Sher, garnered him a Tony Award nomination.
Lucas has also directed plays such as Loot . He directed Birds of America , a film starring Matthew Perry and Hilary Swank, in 2007. [5]
Lucas's play Prayer for My Enemy premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in December 2008. The production was directed by Lucas's frequent collaborator Bartlett Sher and featured Victoria Clark, Michele Pawk and Jonathan Groff. [6] The play ran from November 14 (previews) through December 21.
In June 2013, Melbourne's Regent Theatre hosted the world premiere (and Broadway try-out) of King Kong , [7] for which Lucas has provided the book with a score by Marius de Vries. [8] [9] As of 2014, Lucas is no longer involved with this musical. [10]
Amélie , a musical based on the award-winning film of 2001, premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre (Berkeley, California) In September 2015, with a book by Lucas, music by Daniel Messé (of Hem), lyrics by Nathan Tysen and Messé, and directed by Pam MacKinnon. [11] The production had its pre-Broadway engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. It transferred to Broadway, starting previews on March 9, 2017 and closing on May 21, 2017, after 27 previews and 56 regular performances.
In 2001 Lucas received an Obie Award for his direction of Harry Kondoleon's Saved or Destroyed at the Rattlestick Theater. He won the 2003 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay for The Secret Lives of Dentists . His Small Tragedy was awarded an Obie as Best American Play in 2004. Lucas's other awards include the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award; and Outer Critics Circle, L.A. Drama Critics Circle, Drama-Logue and Lambda Literary Awards.
Fellowships include those from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
He has received the Tony Award nomination for the books of: An American in Paris (2015), Light in the Piazza (2005), Prelude to a Kiss, and Paradise Square (2022). He was nominated for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Prelude to a Kiss.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical. With his frequent collaborations with Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics were tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.
Adam Guettel is an American composer-lyricist of musical theater and opera. The grandson of musical theatre composer Richard Rodgers, he is best known for his musical The Light in the Piazza, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Orchestrations.
Terrence McNally was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," McNally was the recipient of five Tony Awards. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime, and received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996, and he also received the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.
Mary-Louise Parker is an American actress. After making her Broadway debut as Rita in Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss in 1990, Parker came to prominence for film roles in Grand Canyon (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), The Client (1994), Bullets over Broadway (1994), A Place for Annie (1994), Boys on the Side (1995), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and The Maker (1997). Among stage and independent film appearances thereafter, Parker received the 2001 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her portrayal of Catherine Llewellyn in David Auburn's Proof, among other accolades. Between 2001 and 2006, she recurred as Amy Gardner in the NBC television series The West Wing, for which she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2002. She received both a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy Award for her portrayal of Harper Pitt in the acclaimed HBO television miniseries Angels in America in 2003.
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Michael Stewart was an American playwright and dramatist, librettist, lyricist, screenwriter and novelist.
Victoria Clark is an American actress, musical theatre singer and director. Clark has performed in numerous Broadway musicals and in other theatre, film and television works. Her soprano voice can also be heard on various cast albums and several animated films. In 2008, she released her first solo album titled Fifteen Seconds of Grace. A five-time Tony Award nominee, Clark won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2005 for her performance in The Light in the Piazza. She also won the Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Joseph Jefferson Award for the role. She won a second Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2023 for her performance in Kimberly Akimbo.
Bartlett B. Sher is an American theatre director. The New York Times has described him as "one of the most original and exciting directors, not only in the American theater but also in the international world of opera". Sher has been nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific.
Celia Keenan-Bolger is an American actress and singer. She is known for portraying Scout Finch in the play To Kill a Mockingbird (2018), which earned her a Tony Award. She has also won three Drama Desk Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award.
Intiman Theatre Festival in Seattle, Washington, was founded in 1972 as a resident theatre by Margaret "Megs" Booker, who named it for August Strindberg's Stockholm theater. With a self-declared focus on "a resident acting ensemble, fidelity to the playwright's intentions and a close relationship between actor and audience", the Intiman soon called itself as "Seattle's classic theater". Its debut season in 1972 included Rosmersholm, The Creditors, The Underpants, and Brecht on Brecht. The theater has been host to Tony-nominated Director Bartlett Sher, Tony-nominated actress Celia Keenan-Bolger, and movie actor Tom Skerritt. It was also home to the world premieres of the Tony-winning Broadway musical The Light in the Piazza, Craig Lucas's Singing Forest and Dan Savage's "Miracle!". Lucas also served as the Associate Artistic Director. Intiman won the 2006 Regional Theatre Tony Award.
The Circle Repertory Company, originally named the Circle Theater Company, was a theatre company in New York City that ran from 1969 to 1996. It was founded on July 14, 1969, in Manhattan, in a second floor loft at Broadway and 83rd Street by director Marshall W. Mason, playwright Lanford Wilson, director Rob Thirkield, and actress Tanya Berezin, all of whom were veterans of the Caffe Cino. The plan was to establish a pool of artists — actors, directors, playwrights and designers — who would work together in the creation of plays. In 1974, The New York Times critic Mel Gussow acclaimed Circle Rep as the "chief provider of new American plays."
Richard John Nelson is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the book for the 2000 Broadway musical James Joyce's The Dead, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, as well as the book for the 1988 Broadway production of Chess. He is also the writer of the critically acclaimed play cycle The Rhinebeck Panorama.
Jayne Houdyshell is an American actress known for her performances on stage and screen. She earned her first Tony Award nomination for her Broadway debut as Ann in the play Well in 2006. Since then, she has received four more Tony Award nominations for her performances in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies in 2012, the new play by Lucas Hnath A Doll's House, Part 2 in 2017, and the revival of Meredith Willson's The Music Man in 2022. She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the 2016 play The Humans.
Norman René was an American theater and film director and film producer who frequently collaborated with playwright Craig Lucas.
Mark Brokaw is an American theatre director. He won the Drama Desk Award, Obie Award and Lucille Lortel Award as Outstanding Director of a Play for How I Learned to Drive.
Christopher Ashley is an American stage director. Since 2007, he has been the artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
Dave Malloy is an American composer, playwright, lyricist, and actor. He has written several theatrical works, often based on classic works of literature. They include Moby-Dick, an adaptation of Herman Melville's classic novel; Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the mind of romantic composer Sergei Rachmaninoff; Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; and the Tony Award winning Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on War and Peace.
Indecent is a 2015 American play by Paula Vogel. It recounts the controversy surrounding the play God of Vengeance by Sholem Asch, which was produced on Broadway in 1923, and for which the producer and cast were arrested and convicted on the grounds of obscenity.
Katrina Lenk is an American actress, singer, dancer, musician, and songwriter.
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