Doric Wilson (February 24, 1939 –May 7, 2011) was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.
He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington on the Columbia River. He wrote his first play at Kennewick High School, but was accused of plagiarism when a teacher informed him that no student of hers would ever be able to write such a play. [1]
Wilson received his early theater training under Lorraine Larson, apprenticed with Dorothy Seeburger and the Richland Players, and studied briefly at the Drama Department of the University of Washington until he was forced to leave after he initiated a one-person protest against anti-gay sniper attacks at a nearby park. [ citation needed ]
Wilson moved to NYC in 1959 where he had a brief acting career playing such roles as Valère to the Mariane of Dawn Wells (later Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island ) in Molière's Tartuffe and Older Patrick to Nancy Wilder's Auntie Mame in various stock productions. In 1961, he became one of the first resident playwrights at NYC's legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy, And He Made a Her, opened there with Jane Lowry and Larry Neil Clayton leading the cast and Paxton Whitehead directing.
The success of his four plays at Caffe Cino helped, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick, "establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway." His Now She Dances! (1961), a fantasia on the trial of Oscar Wilde, was the first Off-Off-Broadway play to deal positively with gay people. Now She Dances! is the subject of season one (2021) of the LGBTQ theatre history podcast, Out Lines. [2]
Under the mentorship of producer Richard Barr, Wilson became a pioneer of the alternative theatre movement, dedicating his career to writing, directing, producing and/or designing hundreds productions. He was one of the first playwrights invited to join the Barr/Wilder/Albee Playwright's Unit and later became a founding member of Circle Repertory Company. [ citation needed ]
A veteran of the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s-mid 1970s, Wilson was a participant in the Stonewall Riots (1969) and became active in the early days of the New York Gay Liberation movement as a member of GAA (Gay Activist Alliance). He supported his theatrical endeavors by becoming a "star" bartender and manager of the post-Stonewall gay bar scene, opening such landmark institutions as The Spike, TY's and Brothers & Sisters Cabaret. In 2004, Wilson was named a Grand Marshal of the 35th Anniversary Pride Day Parade in New York City. He is featured in the documentary Stonewall Uprising (2010) by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner. [3]
In 1974, Wilson (with Billy Blackwell, Peter del Valle and John McSpadden)[ who? ] formed TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), the first professional theatre company to deal openly and honestly with the gay experience. The company featured new plays and revivals by such writers as Brendan Behan, Noël Coward, Christopher Hampton, Joe Orton, Terrence McNally, Robert Patrick, Sandra Scoppettone, Martin Sherman and Lanford Wilson. [4] Theatre scholar Jordan Schildcrout writes that TOSOS "combined the non-commercial and experimental ethos of the Caffe Cino with the politics and community activism of the gay liberation movement." [5]
In June 2001, Wilson, and directors Mark Finley [6] and Barry Childs resurrected the company as TOSOS II. TOSOS produces two full-length plays each season, in addition to the Chesley/Chambers Play-Reading Series, named after playwrights Robert Chesley and Jane Chambers, both friends of Wilson's. [7] Recent productions include a revival of Wilson's Street Theater, as well as Waiting for Giovanni by Jewelle Gomez, Secret Identity by Chris Weikel, and Bar Dykes by Merril Mushroom. [8]
Wilson died on May 7, 2011, aged 72, from natural causes at his home in Manhattan. [9]
Over the years Wilson reviewed theater for Other Stages, The Villager in NYC and various publications in Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, Oregon. Selected reviews are posted on the Purple Circuit.
United Stages has published Now She Dances!; Street Theatre; and And He Made a Her (which includes a CD of the original 1961 Caffe Cino performance). Earlier versions of Street Theater and A Perfect Relationship are published by TNT Press; Street Theater is also included in the Don Shewey edited anthology Out Front (Grove Press).
There are two theater awards named for Doric Wilson.
The International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival has presented the Doric Wilson Award for International Cultural Dialogue Through Theater every year since 2011. The award is presented each year at the Festival Gala to an artist or company whose work has created new or innovative dialogue about LGBTQ issues.
The New York Independent Theater Awards have presented the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award since 2012. The award is given to a playwright whose writing "honors the innovation, uncompromising vision, heart, and spirit that was Doric Wilson and his work." [13]
Lanford Wilson was an American playwright. His work, as described by The New York Times, was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed". Wilson helped to advance the off-off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964. He was one of the first playwrights to move from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway, then Broadway and beyond.
Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of a response to perceived commercialism of the professional theatre scene and as an experimental or avant-garde movement of drama and theatre. Over time, some off-off-Broadway productions have moved away from the movement's early experimental spirit.
Robert Patrick was an American playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, and novelist.
Balm in Gilead is a 1965 American play written by American playwright Lanford Wilson.
Home Free! is a one-act play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. The play is among Wilson's earlier works, and was first produced off-off-Broadway at the Caffe Cino in 1964.
Marshall W. Mason is an American theater director, educator, and writer. Mason founded the Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was artistic director of the company for 18 years (1969–1987). He received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in 1983. In 2016, he received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater.
Joseph Cino, was an Italian-American theatre producer. The Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement is generally credited to have begun at Cino's Caffe Cino in the West Village of Manhattan.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club is an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1961 by African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer Ellen Stewart. Located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, the theater began in the basement boutique where Stewart sold her fashion designs. Stewart turned the space into a theater at night, focusing on the work of young playwrights.
John Glines was an American playwright and theater producer. He won a Tony Award and multiple Drama Desk Awards during his producing career.
Jeffrey Weiss was an American playwright, impresario, and actor, both on Broadway and a theater he ran with partner Ricardo Martinez in the East Village, Manhattan.
Haralambos Monroe "Harry" Koutoukas was a surrealist playwright, actor and teacher. Along with Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, Doric Wilson, Tom Eyen and Robert Patrick, Koutoukas was among the artists who gave birth to the Off-Off Broadway theatre movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
George Birimisa was an American playwright, actor, and theater director who contributed to gay theater during the 1960s, the early years of the Off-Off-Broadway movement.
Theatre Genesis was an off-off-Broadway theater founded in 1964 by Ralph Cook. Located in the historic St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan, it produced the work of new American playwrights, including Lanford Wilson, Tony Barsha, Murray Mednick, Leonard Melfi, Walter Hadler, and Sam Shepard. Theatre Genesis is often credited as one of the original off-off-Broadway theaters, along with Joe Cino's Caffe Cino, Ellen Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, and Judson Poets Theatre.
The Madness of Lady Bright is a short play by Lanford Wilson, among the earliest of the gay theatre movement. The play was first performed at Joe Cino's Caffe Cino in May 1964.
Jean-Claude van Itallie was a Belgian-born American playwright, performer, and theatre workshop teacher. He is best known for his 1966 anti-Vietnam War play America Hurrah;The Serpent, an ensemble play he wrote with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre; his theatrical adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; and his translations of Anton Chekhov's plays.
Ludlow Fair is a one-act play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. It was first produced at Caffe Cino in 1965, a coffeehouse and theatre founded by Joe Cino, a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement.
The Harris Family is an American family of entertainers. Their careers, collectively and individually, encompass theater, music, film, broadcast media and performance art. They are best known as pioneers of experimental Off-Off-Broadway theater in New York City, San Francisco and Europe from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s.
Caffe Cino was an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1958 by Joe Cino. The West Village coffeehouse, located at 31 Cornelia Street, was initially conceived as a venue for poetry, folk music, and visual art exhibitions. The plays produced at the Cino, however, became most prominent, and it is now considered the "birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway".
Jane Lowry was an American actress primarily known for her theater work on Broadway and regional theater, as well as her singular leading role in Alfred Sole's horror film Alice, Sweet Alice (1976).
Michael Warren Powell was an American artistic director, director, actor and designer involved in the Off-Off-Broadway movement, Off-Broadway and in the development of new American plays.