Doug Wright
Douglas Wright ( born December 20, 1962 in Dallas, Texas ) is an American playwright, screenwriter and librettist.
- 3.3.1 Articles in Anthologies
Life
Born in Texas 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 and graduated at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, the Master of Fine Arts program of drama, which he in 1987 with his play The Stonewater Rapture successfully completed. After further pieces like Interrogating the Nude (via the conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp ), Lot 13: The Bone Violin and Dinosaurs he wrote in 1989 with the composer Michael John LaChiusa and director Christopher Ashley, the camp musical Buzzsaw Berkeley, which the New York WPA Theatre was produced. In 1994, at the same theater his play Watbanaland to a critic success.
Inspired by a biography of the Marquis de Sade was his next drama Quills. The piece explores the relationship between artist and society, and the role of censorship and was founded in 1995 in the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC premiered. It then ran Off- Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop and was successful with both critics and audiences. Wright was awarded by the magazine Village Voice Obie Award; the piece was awarded the National Arts Club with the Kesselring Prize for Best New American piece. Wright also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of his play, which was directed by Philip Kaufman with Geoffrey Rush in the title role, and in 2000 was released in theaters. For his screenplay, he received the Paul Selvin Honorary Award from the Writers Guild of America, the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award and a Golden Satellite Award and a Golden Globe and the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award and the Online Film Critics Society Award nomination. The National Board of Review chose Quills as the best film of the year.
Then led Wright in 2001 four of his one-act plays directed that were listed under the general title Unwrap Your Candy as an off- Broadway production. For Hollywood, he worked on other scripts, so for the developed Steven Spielberg film Memoirs of a Geisha, for which he was nominated in 2005 for the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award. For TV producer Norman Lear he also wrote the screenplays for four pilot films, however, found no takers.
Wright's next play I Am My Own Wife is based on interviews he had conducted in the early 1990s with the Berlin transvestite, gay rights and Stasi -IM Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. In the drama, in which besides Charlotte over 40 other characters appear, all the roles of a single actor will be denied, which is a particular trick of the author. Had the piece in 2003 its off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons Theatre and then ran from the end of 2003 with great success on Broadway, each with Jefferson Mays in all roles, but with a Tony Award for Best Actor as well as the Drama Desk Award for 2004 an outstanding solo presentation was excellent. For the piece itself Doug Wright was awarded the 2004 Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Best Drama and the Pulitzer Prize for the best play. In addition, Wright was awarded the 2005 Lambda Literary Award and the 2006 Medal of Merit (European Tolerance Award) as part of the European Culture Award.
The German premiere of Wright's piece took place on 9 September 2007, Dominique Horwitz at Berlin's Renaissance Theatre under the German title I do anyway, what I want instead. The literal translation I am my own wife was allowed diá due to a dispute with the owner of the German title rights, the Berlin edition, not be used. The publisher released under this title in 1992, written by Peter Sweet autobiography of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. Sweet also wrote another play of the same title, which was premiered in March 2006 at the Schauspielhaus Leipzig.
In 2006, Wright's musical about the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Grey Gardens premiered, again first off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. The piece was in November 2006 at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway premiere and witnessed to July 2007, 307 performances and 33 previews. The Broadway production was honored by Time Magazine as the best show of the year.
For the produced by Walt Disney Theatrical Productions musical The Little Mermaid Wright wrote the book. Production ran from January 2008 to August 2009 on Broadway.