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Albee bows out of play workshop

Pulitzer winner Lanford Wilson to lead this year's student stagings

Cougar News Services

The playwright Edward Albee, who has been part of the UH theater faculty since 1989, will be unable to lead this year's Albee Playwrights' Workshop because of a family illness.

Albee has invited Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson to conduct the workshop this semester. The workshop takes students' scripts and mounts them as full productions after a semester's work.

Wilson began writing as a student at the University of Chicago in the 1950s and became involved with the off-Broadway scene after moving to New York City upon graduation. In 1969, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company, for which he was resident playwright for some 30 years.

Wilson's first major success was Hot L Baltimore, a 1975 play about a group of drifters, prostitutes and elderly people in a run-down hotel. The play ran for 1,100 performances, eventually going on Broadway.

Wilson won the Pulitzer in 1979 for Talley's Folly, a romance set in the 1940s in which a Jewish accountant from St. Louis courts the daughter of a well-to-do family.

Wilson joined the UH School of Theatre in January for a one-semester appointment.

All the plays will be presented at Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway. Admission is free, but there is a $3 parking charge.

This year's Playwrights' Workshop lineup is:

• Jesus and Phoebe by Tommy Le Vrier, in which a lost adolescent finds acceptance from an unlikely stranger, 8 p.m. Friday and 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

• Wondergirl by Rutherford Cravens, a play that examines issues raised by medical technology and a young couple's relationship in a neonatal intensive care unit, 8 p.m. Friday and 4:30 p.m. Saturday.

• Poet by Peter Wittenberg, the tale of an unhappy salesman who discovers he's a poet, 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.

• Star Flower Sanctuary by Ann Stingle, the story of a grieving woman who seeks solace at the beach, 7:30 p.m. April 23 and 4:30 p.m. April 24.

• A Private Dance by Brian Wolf, the story of a young man who struggles to accept the life choices he's making after a wild bachelor party, 7:30 p.m. April 23 and 4:30 p.m. April 24.

• Biology, 4th Period by Lou Amyx, in which six teenagers at high school find their lives disrupted by the arrival of a seventh teen, 7:30 p.m. April 23 and 4:30 p.m. April 24.

• Claustrophobia by Mary Ellen Whitworth, one woman's struggle to understand humanity's need to find peace and order -- sort of, 8 p.m. April 24 and 3 p.m. April 25.

For more information on the Playwrights' Workshop, visit www.class.uh.edu/theatre/Performance/newplays.htm.
 

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