Playwright Lanford Wilson, born in Lebanon, Missouri in 1937, is a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway and regional theatre movements. He won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Talley's Folly (1979). Wilson attended schools in Missouri, San Diego, California and Chicago before moving to New York City in 1962. From 1963 his plays were produced regularly at Off-Off-Broadway theatres such as Caffe Cino and La Mama Experimental Theatre Company.

Wilson is a founder (with Tanya Berezin, Rob Thirkield and Marshall W. Mason) of The Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was a resident playwright there from 1969-1995. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and has made his home in Sag Harbor since 1970.

Schedule of Events:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18

3:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.--Tour of "WILLIAM INGE’S INDEPENDENCE." Sign up at the Registration desk in the Margaret Goheen Foyer, Fine Arts Building. Tour leaves from in front of Inge Theatre. Fee: $2
4:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.--SCENES FROM WILLIAM INGE'S DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS at his boyhood home, 514 N. 4th Street. Limited space-sign up at the Registration Desk in the Margaret Goheen Foyer, Fine Arts Building.  (must have Daytime Pass or entrance fee is $5)
8:00 P.M.--A Staged Reading of MY SON IS A SPLENDID DRIVER by William Inge. The playwright's autobiographical novel, adapted for the stage by Dennis Brown, with actress Mary Beth Hurt in the lead role. Adults $8.00/Students $5.00 (ICC students free). All seats reserved. William Inge Theatre, Fine Arts Building.

Festival Participants

ROBERT ANDERSON's plays have been produced professionally and in community and college theatres all over the world. His most famous plays include Tea and Sympathy (1953), Silent Night, Lonely Night (1959), You Know I Can't Hear You When The Water's Running (1967), I Never Sang For My Father (1968), and Solitaire/Double Solitaire (1971). Anderson has also written extensively for motion pictures, radio, and television. His film credits included Tea and Sympathy, (1956), Until They Sail, (1957), The Nun's Story, (1959), The Sand Pebbles, (1966), and I Never Sang For My Father, (1970), (nominated for the Academy Award and winner of the Screenwriter's Guild Award). In 1980 Anderson was nominated for the Writer's Guild Award for his television drama, The Patricia Neal Story, and was elected to The Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981. The Kissing Was Always The Best is one of his most recent plays and I Never Sang For My Father enjoyed a successful revival in 1987 and 1988. In 1991, two of Anderson's works were shown on television, The Last Act Is A Solo, which won an Ace Award, and Absolute Strangers. Anderson is on the Dramatists Guild Council and served as Vice-President of the Authors League of America. He is the author of two novels: After and Getting Up and Going Home. Last year, Mr. Anderson was honored by Hofstra University with the “Robert Anderson Retrospective: Theatre and Film” symposium.

WILLIAM ATHERTON's movies include The Sugarland Express, The Day of the Locust, Looking For Mr. Goodbar, Ghostbusters, Die Hard and Die Hard 2 among others.  Television films and miniseries include James Michener's Centenniel, Broken Trust for TNT, and the role of Daryl Zanuck in HBO's Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.  He will be seen next in Columbia/TriStar's Race For Space.  In theatre, he received the Drama Desk Award, Outer Circle Critics Award and two Obie nominations for Suggs in the City.  He was in John Guare's House of Blue Leaves and Rich and Famous.

TANYA BEREZIN is a co-founder, with Lanford Wilson and Marshall Mason, of the Circle Repertory Company in New York.  She served as its artistic director from 1986-1994 with noteworthy productions as Three Hotels, The Fiery Furnace, Prelude to a Kiss, and Wilson's Redwood Curtain.  Her career in the theatre includes off Broadway productions of Sympathetic Magic, The Mound Builders (Obie Award 1975, Serenading Louie, and Battle of Angels.  Broadway productions include Angel's Fall and Fifth of July.  She is currently an acting coach for several independent clients.

DENNIS BROWN is an author and screenwriter. His first book, Shoptalk:Conversations about Theater and Film with Twelve Writers, One Producer - and Tennessee Williams' Mother, was published in 1992. Actors Talk: Profiles and Stories from the Acting Trade, was published last year. His TV-movie adaptation of the classic Civil War short story The Perfect Tribute, starred Jason Robards as Abraham Lincoln. For ten years he was a publicist at CBS Entertainment, where he developed the publicity campaigns for such mini-series as The Blue and The Gray, Buffalo Girls and George Washington. He was Angela Lansbury's publicist for the final seasons of Murder, She Wrote, as well as for Mrs. Santa Claus.

CONCHATA FERRELL will be seen in the upcoming film K-Pa, starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges and is about to begin Deeds, starring Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder. While she has recently been seen in Erin Brockovich, her film credits also include Touch, My Fellow Americans, Heaven and Earth, directed by Oliver Stone, Edward Scissorhands, and Mystic Pizza. Ferrell also starred in the critically acclaimed independent feature, Heartland. In television she was a regular on Townies, Hearts Afire, ER-Emergency Room, McLain's Law, and B.J. and the Bear. However, her most notable performance came as Susan Bloom on the long-running series L.A. Law for which she received an Emmy nomination. Theatre includes the Ahmanson Theatre production of William Inge's Picnic, Lanford Wilson's The Hot L Baltimore, and The Sea Horse-a performance which earned her a Drama Desk award, and OBIE and the Theater World Award for the Most Promising Newcomer.

MARY HANES has had many plays, one-acts and comedy shows produced around the country. Her full-length play, The Crimson Thread, was produced for National Public Radio and received its first regional production at Seven Angels Theater in Waterbury, Connecticut, and its West Coast premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse. The Crimson Thread is currently running at Wings Theater in New York City. Her comedy, Doin' Time at the Alamo was purchased by Hallmark. Mary is a recipient of the Inge Festival’s “New Voices in American Theatre” Award and the “Mildred & Albert Panowski Playwriting Award.” Mary co-developed PAX TV's 1999 series Hope Island where she served as Executive Producer. Currently she is writing and producing on the WB series, Dead Last.

THE 2000 MARGO JONES AWARD WAS PRESENTED TO EILEEN HECKART AT THE GALA DINNER AT THE INDEPENDENCE COUNTRY CLUB ON FRIDAY, APRIL 20.

EILEEN HECKART is a favorite character actress of the Broadway stage, motion pictures, and television drama and was recently inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. She starred in William Inge's Picnic, as Rosemary, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, as Lottie. She also starred as Gladys in the movie version of Inge's Bus Stop. Honors include an Academy Award in 1973 for best actress in the movie Butterflies Are Free, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, four Tony nominations, and three honorary doctorates. Miss Heckart attended Ohio State University with Jerome Lawrence, was in Robert Anderson's play You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running, starred in John Patrick's play Everybody Loves Opal, and replaced Mildred Natwick in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park on Broadway. Last year, Eileen Heckart won eight awards (including the Obie, Drama Desk, and an honorary Tony Award) for her performance in Kenneth Lonergan's Off-Broadway play, The Waverly Gallery about a woman's journey into Alzheimer's disease.

MARY HENDERSON is an internationally known expert on American theatre history and was, for more than a decade, Curator of the Theatre Collection of the Museum of the City of New York and has also served as executive director of the San Francisco Archives of the Performing Arts. She was the Founder-director of the now defunct Theatre Museum in New York's theatre district from 1982 to 1986 and is now curator of the White Barn Theatre Museum in Westport, Connecticut. She is the author of The City and the Theatre, Theater in America, Broadway Ballyhoo, The New Amsterdam: Biography of a Broadway Theatre, and Mielziner: Master of Modern Stage Design, which was released March 2001. For twelve seasons, she was a member to the "Tony" Nominating Committee. Among her distinctions have been a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983), the George Freedley Book Award (1987), A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1991), a Graham Foundation grant (1994), the Broadway Theatre Institute Award (1995), and the USITT Golden Pen Award (1999).

JUDD HIRSCH began his stage career in 1964 at the Woodstock Playhouse playing Murray Burns in Herb Gardner's A Thousand Clowns.  In 1966, he played the comic telephone man in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park on Broadway.  Off-Broadway includes Lanford Wilson's Hot L Baltimore and creating the role of Matt Friedman in Talley's Folly for which he won an Obie Award.  On Broadway he won the Drama Desk Award for Knock, Knock, appeared in Neil Simon's Chapter Two, was nominated for a Tony and Drama Desk Award for his performance in Talley's Folly, and won the Tony Award for I'm Not Rappaport.  He won a Tony once more for Conversations With My Father in 1992.  In 1996 he appeared in A Thousand Clowns and in 1998-99 he starred in Art on Broadway.  Television includes playing Alex Rieger in the long running series, Taxi, Dear John, and George and Leo with Bob Newhart.  Films are numerous: Ordinary People, Teachers, The Goodbye People, Running On Empty, Independence Day, Man On The Moon.

MARY BETH HURT appeared last December in the Lincoln Center production of Wendy Wasserstein's Old Money. She has received three Tony Award nominations, for her title-role performances in Arthur Wing Pinero's Trelawney of the Wells, for her acclaimed performance in Michael Frayn's British drama Benefactors, and for her role as Meg in Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize - winning Crimes of the Heart. She first played Meg in the original Off - Broadway production (for which she won an Obie award), and then repeated the role on Broadway and in Los Angeles. Other stage credits include David Hare's The Secret Rapture. She starred with George Grizzard in the recent New York revival of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize - winning A Delicate Balance. Hurt made her film debut in Woody Allen's Interiors. Other notable films include The World According to Garp, the eerie cult classic Parents, Six Degrees of Separation (from the play by John Guare), The Age of Innocence and Bringing out the Dead (both directed by Martin Scorsese), and Affliction, which was written and directed by her husband, Paul Schrader. Last year she appeared in Autumn in New York and The Family Man.

ZANE LASKY has made appearances on such television shows as Mad About You, Knot's Landing and Dallas as well as being a series regular on The Tony Randall Show. Film appearances include Network, Hester Street and Sentinel. Broadway performances include Three Men on a Horse, directed by John Tillinger; The Seagull, directed by Marshall Mason; A Little Hotel on the Side; and All Over Town, directed by Dustin Hoffman. He has also in the national tour of Art with Judd Hirsch. He was in Lanford Wilson's The Hot L Baltimore and Balm in Gilead, and in Not Enough Rope directed by Judd Hirsch. Other theatre credits include the national tour of The Odd Couple with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall and in Death of a Salesman at the Falcon Theatre in L.A.

DAVID E. LeVINE is a theatrical lawyer, consultant and lecturer. He is Chairman of the Margo Jones Award Committee, a trustee of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, and a member of the board of the T. Schreiber Studio. He was Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild, Inc., from 1966 to 1992. He was a founding member of the Broadway Alliance Committee and a member of the Tony Awards Administration Committee. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University Law School.

MARSHALL MASON’s long time collaboration with Lanford Wilson has spanned over thirty years. His twelve productions on Broadway received four Tony Awards for Redwood Curtain, Burn This, Fifth of July, and Talley’s Folly. Tony nominations include five for Best Director: Knock, Knock, Talley’s Folly, Fifth of July, Angels Fall, and As Is. He was the founding artistic director of New York’s Circle Repertory Company and is the recipient of six Obie Awards for his work Off-Broadway, honoring his original direction of The Hot L Baltimore, Battle of Angels, The Mound Builders, Serenading Louie, Knock Knock and for his sustained achievement in over 150 productions. He has also directed Chekhov’s Three Sisters, The Seagull, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear, and Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He is the recipient of the Margo Jones Award, the Theater World award, the Inge Festival Directing Award, The Last Frontier Award for Distinguished Direction, and the Edwin Piscator Award. Most recently, he directed Ginger, a new musical based on the life of Ginger Rogers and will next stage his new translation of Enrico IV.

JASON MILLIGAN's plays have been produced throughout the United States, in Canada and in Europe. Twenty-three of them are now published by Samuel French, Inc., including Men In Suits, which was originally read at the Inge Festival in 1993 when Jason was chosen as the first "New Voices in the American Theatre" playwright. Men In Suits went on to receive a world premiere at the historic Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut starring Charles Durning, Dan Lauria and James Handy. Jason has also authored or co-authored five collections of audition monologues for Samuel French as well. He and fellow "New Voice" honoree Mary Hanes recently served as Supervising Producer and Executive Producer, respectively, for Hope Island, an award-winning television series on the PAX network, which they created and wrote together. Jason currently works as a writer for the Walt Disney Company.

DEBRA MONK's Broadway performances include Ah Wilderness, Steel Pier, (Tony Nomination) Company, Picnic, (Tony Nomination) Redwood Curtain, (Tony Award) Nick and Nora, Prelude To A Kiss, and Pumpboys and Dinettes.  Off-Broadway includes Time of the Cuckoo, Death Defying Acts, 3 Hotels, Oil City Symphony,  and Assassins.  Television credits include NYPD Blue (Katie Sipowicz-Emmy Award), Nero Wolfe (A & E), Trinity, Law and Order, and many others.  Film-Devil's Advocate, In and Out, Substance of Fire, Extreme Measures, The Bridges of Madison County, Jeffrey, Quiz Show.

MICHAEL WARREN POWELL has been associated with Lanford Wilson since the early 1960's. At the Caffe Cino, Lanford wrote his early plays, So Long at the Fair and Home Free! for Powell. Michael appeared in Wilson's This is the Rill Speaking, The Rimers of Eldritch, Balm in Gilead and The Gingham Dog and in many more by Sam Shepard, Paul Foster, Rochelle Owens and others. Today Michael still acts in television (Law and Order) and in film (Prelude to a Kiss). He is Artistic Director of Circle East, the theater company he inherited from Circle Rep, and Artistic Director of The New York State Summer School of Theater Arts. He began the New Play Lab for the Alaska New Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez. He is on the Directing Faculty at Rutgers University.

MARK ST. GERMAIN has written Camping With Henry and Tom (Outer Critics Circle Award-Best Off Broadway Play, Lucille Lortel Award-Best Off Broadway Play and included in The Best Plays of 1994-95), Out of Gas on Lover’s Leap and Forgiving Typhoid Mary. His latest play Bernhardt on the Boardwalk, Duncan on the Dunes has been optioned by Producer Daryl Roth. With Randy Courts, he has written the musicals The Gifts of the Magi, Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller, Jack’s Holiday and an adaptation of Walter Wangerin’s National Book Award-winning The Book of the Dun Cow. Mark has also written the book for the Tammy Wynette musical Stand By Your Man. Television include Carol Burnett & Company and The Cosby Show. He is currently adapting for the screen Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk To Freedom.

LANE SMITH won a Drama Desk Award for his performance in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. He starred as Randle McMurphy in the Off-Broadway revival of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In film he portrayed Grantland Rice in The Legend of Beggar Vance. Other notable motion pictures include Why Do Fools Fall in Love, The Scout, The Distinguished Gentleman, The Mighty Ducks, My Cousin Vinny, Air America, Places in the Heart, Red Dawn, Frances, Prince of the City, Honeysuckle Rose, Blue Collar, Network and Rooster Cogburn. In 1989 Smith was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as Richard Nixon in the ABC television mini-series, The Final Days. Television series include playing editor Perry White in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. His television credits include Special Bulletin, Something about Amelia, A Death in Canaan, Gideon's Trumpet, Prime Suspect, A Rumor of War, Chiefs and Tom Hanks' epic From the Earth to the Moon. Last season he starred in the Showtime production of Inherit the Wind.

RALPH VOSS, a professor of English at the University of Alabama, is the author of the William Inge biography, A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph. A native of Lyons, Kansas, Voss holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Ft. Hays State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He has published biographical and critical articles about Inge and his works in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, The Dictionary of American Biography, Kansas Quarterly and The Library Chronicle. He also teaches and publishes in the field of rhetoric and composition.

PHILIP WILLIAMS received his BFA in drama from the University of Miami, his MFA in playwriting from the University of Minnesota, and a PhD from the University of Colorado.  His doctoral thesis on the collaboration of Lanford Wilson and Marshall W. Mason at the Circle Rep was published in 1993. He is the author of several plays, including The Hunter, Dark Twist, and The Purer, Brighter Years. 

LUKE YANKEE has directed, produced and taught at regional theatres throughout the U.S. and abroad. Last summer, he directed a new off-Broadway comedy, High Infidelity, starring Barbara Eden and John Davidson at the Promenade Theatre. He has served as the Artistic Director of the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and the Struthers Library Theatre. Directing highlights include: Love Letters with Ed Asner, Sally Struthers, Troy Donahue, Joanna Gleason, John Rubenstein, and Governor Pete Wilson; Night Club Confidential with Barbara Eden, Man of La Mancha with John McCook, The King & I with Lee Meriwether, Driving Miss Daisy with Eileen Heckart and Private Lives with David Canary. For the last four years, he directed Theatre LA's Ovation Awards, honoring excellence in Los Angeles theatre. He is a regular teacher and director at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Columbia College in Hollywood.

Conference Scholars

Robert Combs, George Washington University, will present a paper titled “Oh, Those Kids!: Vanishing Childhood Innocence in the Adults of William Inge.”

Randy Gener, New York City, will present “A Sense of Spirit: The Sympathetic Magic of Lanford Wilson’s Later Plays.”

Joy Goldsmith-Kelley, University of Oklahoma, will present “Avoidance, Topic Shifting and Silence as Conflict Management in A Loss of Roses.”

Jeffrey B. Loomis, Northwest Missouri State University will present “In the Redwoods of Long-Historied Patriarchy: Lanford Wilson on America’s Dombeys.”

James David Patterson, Imperial Valley College, will present “The Electra Complex in Two Plays by William Inge.”