Eclipse Theatre Company of Chicago is proud to announce Legendary American writer Lanford Wilson as the featured playwright of the 2005 season. Lanford Wilson began writing plays in the early 1960s and has written many memorable ones including Talley's Folly, Balm in Gilead, Burn This, and Fifth of July. His plays explore themes of alienation, loneliness, and crumbling illusions. Actor Christopher Reeve has called Lanford Wilson the modern Chekhov and Actress Swoozie Kurts says that Wilson "plays the music of the theatre on his wondrous typewriter."

Born on April 13, 1937, in Lebanon, Missouri, Lanford Wilson began writing at the University of Chicago in 1959 after enrolling in a playwriting class. He moved to New York City where he soon became involved with a group of theatrical artists at the Caf� Cino, one of many tiny coffeehouses Off-Off-Broadway 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 Caf� Cino in 1963. Another of Wilson's scripts to be produced at the caf� was a one-act entitled "Home Free" (1964) which revolved around the relationship of two incestuous siblings. During the run of "Home Free", Wilson met another member of the Caf� Cino group, a young director named Marshall W. Mason. Although the two started off on the wrong foot when Mason criticized Wilson's rewrite of "Home Free", the young playwright soon gave Mason a copy of his latest play, "Balm in Gilead "(1965), a massive, 56 character piece that incorporated simultaneous scenes and overlapping dialogue. Several months later, "Balm in Gilead" opened under the direction of Mason at the Caf� LaMama. Not only was the play a great critical success, but it marked the beginning of a long and profitable collaboration between the two young artists.

In 1969, Wilson co-founded Circle Repertory Company with a group of friends that included Mason. The company's first major success was Wilson's "Hot L Baltimore" (1973), the story of a group of drifters, prostitutes, and aging residents in an old, run-down hotel. "Hot L Baltimore", 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 archeological dig sets the stage for a fascinating 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. Wilson has often been compared to Legendary Playwrights, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Lillian Hellman. His plays usually explore themes of alienation, loneliness, and crumbling illusions. Other works include "Burn This", "Redwood Curtain", "Fifth of July", "Talley and Son", "Book of Days", "Sympathetic Magic", and "Rain Dance". Wilson's awards include, among others, the Vernon Rice Award for "The 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 is a member of the theatre group Circle East and is on the Dramatists Guild Council. In 2002-2003, New York's Signature Theatre Company devoted an entire season to Mr. Wilson's works.