All the world's a stage ...: Lanford Wilson's mirroring of the contemporary US

Abstract

Along with Sam Shepard and David Mamet, Lanford Wilson is one of the most renowned contemporary American playwrights. With over forty plays to his name he is also one of the most prolific. His plays are widely performed Off and Off-off Broadway and in regional and university theatres. His works have been honoured with numerous awards: Obie and Tonies, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, New York Drama Critic s Circles, a Drama-logue, a Vernon Rice, a Brandeis University Creative Arts, the Institute of Arts and Letters award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Even though the author is not so popular in Europe -- the reason for that being perhaps that he is so typically American -- he is well worth studying, the more so that his plays are interesting from a sociological point of view. Indeed, his works are so strongly rooted in American civilisation and heritage that they may contribute to a better awareness of what life in the post-war United States is like. It is, after all, one of the theatre s traditional functions to mirror the society it lives in, and Wilson gives a clear, often critical reflection, of present day America. Wilson's plays are like slices of real life. The characters that he draws are people of flesh and blood, who speak (Snellinx and Van de Walle) and "act" like people of flesh and blood, they are not artificial creatures who can only survive on the stage. Lanford Wilson s oeuvre mirrors the comédie humaine of the post-war United States. The characters that populate his plays represent all social layers in American society: he stages junkies, common whores, pimps, teachers, preachers, highbrow professors, artists, restaurateurs... They are all confronted with problems common to any modern man or woman.