Doug Wright (writer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Douglas Wright (born December 20, 1962 in Dallas , Texas ) is an American playwright , screenwriter and librettist .

Life

Doug Wright studied at Yale College of Yale University in New Haven . After completing his bachelor's degree in 1985, he moved to New York City , where he completed the Master of Fine Arts program in drama at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts , which he successfully completed in 1987 with his play The Stonewater Rapture . After other pieces such as Interrogating the Nude (about the conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp ), Lot 13: The Bone Violin and Dinosaurs , he wrote the camp musical Buzzsaw Berkeley in 1989 together with the composer Michael John LaChiusa and the director Christopher Ashley , which was performed at the New York WPA Theater was produced. In 1994 his play Watbanaland at the same theater was a critical success .

His next drama, Quills, was inspired by a biography of the Marquis de Sade . The play addresses the relationship between artist and society and the role of censorship and was premiered in 1995 at the Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC . It then ran off-Broadway at the New York Theater Workshop and met with critical and audiences alike. Wright received an Obie Award from Village Voice magazine for it ; the piece was from the National Arts Club with the Kesselring Prize as the Best New American piece. Wright also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of his play, which was directed by Philip Kaufman, starring Geoffrey Rush and which was released in theaters in 2000. For his screenplay he received the Paul Selvin Honorary Award from the Writers Guild of America , the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award and the Golden Satellite Award, and was nominated for the Golden Globe , the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award and the Online Film Critics Society Award . The National Board of Review chose Quills for best film of the year .

Wright then directed four of his one-act plays in 2001 , which were performed as an off-Broadway production under the joint title Unwrap Your Candy . He worked on other screenplays for Hollywood, including the film Memoirs of a Geisha developed by Steven Spielberg , for which he was nominated for the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award in 2005. He also wrote the scripts for four pilot films for the TV producer Norman Lear , which, however, did not find any buyers.

Wright's next piece, I Am My Own Wife, is based on interviews he conducted in the early 1990s with the Berlin transvestite, gay rights activist and Stasi IM Charlotte von Mahlsdorf . In the drama, in which more than 40 other characters appear in addition to Charlotte, all roles are played by a single actor, which is a special trick of the author. The play had its off-Broadway premiere in 2003 at the Playwrights Horizons Theater and then ran with great success on Broadway from the end of 2003 , each with Jefferson Mays in all roles, who won a Tony Award for Best Actor and the Drama Desk Award for in 2004 an outstanding solo performance was awarded. For the play itself, Doug Wright received the 2004 Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for best drama and the Pulitzer Prize for best play . Wright also received the Lambda Literary Award in 2005 and the European Tolerance Award in 2006 as part of the KulturPreis Europa .

The German premiere of Wright's play took place on September 9, 2007 with Dominique Horwitz at the Berlin Renaissance Theater under the German title Ich mach ja noch, what I want . The literal translation I am my own wife was not allowed to be used due to a legal dispute with the owner of the German title rights, Berliner Edition diá . Under this title, the publishing house published the autobiography of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf written by Peter Süß in 1992 . Suss also wrote another play with the same title, which premiered in March 2006 at the Schauspiel Leipzig .

In 2006, Wright's musical about the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis , Gray Gardens premiered, initially again off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons . The play premiered at the Walter Kerr Theater on Broadway in November 2006 and had 307 performances and 33 previews by July 2007. The Broadway production was named Best Show of the Year by Time Magazine.

Wright wrote the book for the musical The Little Mermaid produced by Walt Disney Theatrical Productions . Production ran on Broadway from January 2008 to August 2009.

Works

stage

  • 1995: Quills (Off-Broadway)
  • 2003: I Am My Own Wife (Off-Broadway, then Broadway)
  • 2006: Gray Gardens (stage adaptation of the 1975 documentary of the same name)
  • 2007: The Little Mermaid (stage adaptation of the 1989 Disney film , Broadway)

Movie

Unproduced scripts

Book publications

  • Interrogating the nude . 1990 (script)
  • The stonewater rapture . Dramatists Play Service, New York 1990, LCCN  91-155315
  • Watbanaland . Dramatists Play Service, New York 1995, ISBN 0-8222-1480-6
  • Quills . Dramatists Play Service, New York 1996, ISBN 0-8222-1531-4
  • Unwrap your candy. An evening of one-act plays . Dramatists Play Service, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8222-1871-2 (contains the one-act play Unwrap your candy , lot 13: The bone violin , Wildwood Park and Baby talk )
  • I am my own wife. Studies for a play about the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf . Faber & Faber, New York 2004, ISBN 0-571-21174-7
  • I am my own wife . Dramatists Play Service, New York 2005, ISBN 0-8222-2024-5
  • Quills and other plays . Faber & Faber, New York 2005, ISBN 0-571-21180-1 (contains the pieces Quills , Interrogating the nude and Watbanaland )

Contributions to edited volumes

  • New American plays . Heinemann, Portsmouth 1992, ISBN 0-435-08604-9 . Therein from Wright: Interrogating the nude
  • Howard Stein, Glenn Young (Eds.): The best American short plays, 1994-1995 . Applause, New York 1995, ISBN 1-55783-231-5 (Paperback: ISBN 1-55783-232-3 ). Therein from Wright: Lot 13: The bone violin
  • Glenn Young (Ed.): The best American short plays, 1996-1997 . Applause, New York 1998, ISBN 1-55783-316-8 (Paperback: ISBN 1-55783-317-6 ). Therein from Wright: Wildwood Park

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ kfe.de
  2. ↑ kfe.de
  3. ↑ broadwayworld.com
  4. ↑ time.com
personal data
SURNAME Wright, Doug
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wright, Douglas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American playwright, screenwriter, and librettist
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Dallas , Texas, United States