Lanford Wilson News

American Blues Theater has revealed the recipient of the 2025 Blue Ink Award is Alyssa Haddad-Chin for her play You Should Be So Lucky. Learn more about Haddad-Chin and about the award.

The American Theatre Critics and Journalists Association has revealed six finalists for the 2025 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, recognizing the playwrights who produced the best scripts that premiered professionally outside of New York City in 2024.

What did our critic think of BOOK OF DAYS at Wichita Community Theatre?

The Guthrie Theater has revealed nine productions as part of its 2025–2026 mainstage season, plus a world premiere. Learn more about the season and see full programming here!

Acclaimed by Frank Rich as 'a writer who illuminates the deepest dramas of American life with poetry and compassion,' Lanford Wilson is one of the most esteemed contemporary American playwrights of our time. Nowhere is this more evident than in his latest play, Book of Days, which has won the Best Play Award from the American Theater Critics Association. 

The Lucille Lortel Theatre has revealed that four new musicals will receive support through the 121 Project, the Lortel's tailored development program for new musical works. Learn more!

That is one reason I love new work so much is I love getting to help create something from scratch and be there right at the beginning of it and grow with it.

Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre kicks off its 2025 calendar year offerings with an offbeat murder mystery/character study by Lanford Wilson called BOOK OF DAYS performed at The Westport Bowery. The play, originally commissioned by Jeff Daniels in 1998 for his own small town (Michigan) theater company, is set in a southwestern Missouri rural community at a time not specifically named. Lanford Wilson is best known for his naturalistic use of dialogue.  His best- known work is the two-hander “Talley’s Folly.” BOOK OF DAYS draws on Wilson’s own theatrical roots in small-town America. He was from Lebanon, Missouri.

What a pleasure to see Fiddler On The Roof performed with a live orchestra. It’s one of my favorites, and it’s being performed by the Wichita Community Theatre. You have one more weekend left to see it, as it runs until February 2nd. Forty people volunteered to bring the show to the stage. This large cast made me cry as I recalled the many memories I had performing in this much loved musical.

Moving Arts has revealed the members of the MADLab 2025 cohort. MADLab playwrights have also gone on to write for television shows such as Watchmen, Man in the High Castle, Vida, and Lawman Bass Reeves, among others.

On stage, February 7-23, at Stagework Theatre is Natalie Symons's 'The People Downstairs.' Symons, an avid actor since childhood, recalls, 'Even as a kid, I demanded my little friends be actors in my fully staged backyard productions... I was a nightmare.' Despite her early retirement from acting to concentrate on writing, she found playwriting to be a natural evolution of storytelling.

That’s how I got started writing plays. I have never taken a playwriting class, I’m about to next semester, and I still don’t quite know what I’m doing. But I know that I love it.

'The A Train Anthology' will serve up in this 90-minute world-premiere production at Brooklyn Art Haus this December. Learn more about the production and how to get tickets here!

Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 has its sights set on the Broadway stage! A Broadway-bound stage adaptation  is in development with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok.

Discover new plays at a free staged reading event at Cranford Community Center, presented by The Theater Project and Cranford Library, followed by a playwright-audience discussion. Learn more and see how to purchase tickets.

The Fire This Time Festival will present Melda Beaty, Rachel Herron, and Marcus Scott as playwrights for its New Works Lab. Learn more about the Lab and about the playwrights!

I really tried to focus on the fact that these were the last ones I was going to do here at this place. I wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to enjoy every opportunity I had and everything I did.

TheatreWorks will present MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY, a holiday play set to run in December. Experience a festive continuation of Jane Austen's beloved characters in this seasonal production. Learn how to purchase tickets.

TOSOS Theater Company announced free readings of 'Queer Spooky Shorts' on October 28 at 7pm, featuring Halloween-themed performances. Join for an evening of unique storytelling and celebration.

Sarah Paulson recently visited The Kelly Clarkson Show and, on the show, shared the personal significance of winning the Tony Award earlier this year for her performance in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate.