Doric Wilson was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.

He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington

Plymouth, Washington

Plymouth is an unincorporated community in Benton County, Washington, United States. Plymouth is located on the Columbia River across from Umatilla, Oregon. It is south of the Tri-Cities and is served by Interstate 82. It was named by early settlers who felt a nearby rock promontory resembled...

 on the Columbia River. He wrote his first play at Kennewick High School, but was accused of plagiarism when a teacher informed him that no student of hers would ever be able to write such a play.

Training

Wilson received his early theater training under Lorraine Larson, apprenticed with Dorothy Seeburger and the Richland Players, and studied briefly at the Drama Department of the University of Washington

University of Washington

University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 until he was forced to leave after he initiated a one person protest against anti-gay sniper attacks at a nearby park.

New York career

Wilson moved to NYC in 1959 where he had a brief acting career playing such roles as Valère to the Mariane of Dawn Wells

Dawn Wells

Dawn Elberta Wells is an American actress known for playing Mary Ann Summers on the sitcom Gilligan's Island during its run from 1964 until 1967.- Early life :...

 (later Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island is an American television series created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz and originally produced by United Artists Television. The situation comedy series featured Bob Denver; Alan Hale, Jr.; Jim Backus; Natalie Schafer; Tina Louise; Russell Johnson; and Dawn Wells. It aired for...

) in Molière

Molière

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...

's Tartuffe

Tartuffe

Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...

and Older Patrick to Nancy Wilder's Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame

Auntie Mame is a 1955 novel by Patrick Dennis that chronicles the madcap adventures of a boy, Patrick, growing up as the ward of his deceased father's eccentric sister, Mame Dennis. The book is a work of fiction inspired by the author's eccentric aunt, Marion Tanner, whose life and outlook in many...

 in various stock productions. In 1961, he became one of the first resident playwrights at NYC's legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy, And He Made a Her, opened there with Jane Lowry and Larry Neil Clayton leading the cast and Paxton Whitehead

Paxton Whitehead

Paxton Whitehead is a British actor who made his professional debut in 1956. Whitehead is best known to American movie audiences as Professor Phillip Barbay in the 1986 comedy film Back to School.-Early years:...

 directing.

The success of his four plays at Caffe Cino helped, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick

Robert Patrick (playwright)

Robert Patrick is a gay American playwright, poet, lyricist, and short-story writer and novelist. He was born Robert Patrick O'Connor in Kilgore, Texas, USA.-Personal life:...

, "establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway

Off-Off-Broadway

Off-Off-Broadway theatrical productions in New York City are those in theatres that are smaller than Broadway and Off-Broadway theatres. Off-Off-Broadway theaters are often defined as theaters that have fewer than 100 seats, though the term can be used for any show in the New York City area that...

." His Now She Dances!, a fantasia on the trial of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

, was the first Off-Off-Broadway play to deal positively with gay people (1961).

Under the mentorship of producer Richard Barr, Wilson became a pioneer of the alternative theatre movement, dedicating his career to writing, directing, producing and/or designing hundreds productions. He was one of the first playwrights invited to join the Barr/Wilder/Albee Playwright's Unit and later became a founding member of Circle Repertory Company

Circle Repertory Company

The Circle Repertory Company, originally named the Circle Theater Company, was a theatre company in New York City that ran from 1969 to 1996. It was founded on July 14, 1969, in Manhattan, in a second floor loft at Broadway and 83rd Street by director Marshall W...

.

Gay activism

A veteran of the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s-mid 1970s, Wilson was a participant in the Stonewall Riots

Stonewall riots

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City...

 (1969) and became active in the early days of the New York Gay Liberation movement as a member of GAA (Gay Activist Alliance). He supported his theatrical endeavors by becoming a "star" bartender and manager of the post-Stonewall gay bar scene, opening such landmark institutions as The Spike, TY's and Brothers & Sisters Cabaret. In 2004, Wilson was named a Grand Marshal of the 35th Anniversary Pride Day Parade in New York City. He was featured in the documentary Stonewall Uprising (2010) by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner.

Gay theater

In 1974, Wilson (with Billy Blackwell, Peter del Valle and John McSpadden) formed TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), the first professional theatre company to deal openly and honestly with the gay experience. The company featured new plays and revivals by such writers as Brendan Behan

Brendan Behan

Brendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...

, Noël Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

, Christopher Hampton

Christopher Hampton

Christopher James Hampton CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, screen writer and film director. He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons and also more recently for writing the nominated screenplay for the film adaptation of...

, Charles Jurrist, Joe Orton

Joe Orton

John Kingsley Orton was an English playwright.In a short but prolific career lasting from 1964 until his death, he shocked, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies...

, Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally

Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...

, Robert Patrick

Robert Patrick (playwright)

Robert Patrick is a gay American playwright, poet, lyricist, and short-story writer and novelist. He was born Robert Patrick O'Connor in Kilgore, Texas, USA.-Personal life:...

, Sandra Scoppettone, Martin Sherman

Martin Sherman

Martin Sherman is an American dramatist and screenwriter, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-nominated play Bent , which explores the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust...

 and Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson was an American playwright who helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

. In June, 2001, Wilson, and directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs resurrected the company as TOSOS II. The original TOSOS and its production of Doric Wilson's play The West Street Gang are featured in "Perform", the new permanent exhibit on theatre at The Museum of New York City.

Criticism

Over the years Wilson reviewed theater for Other Stages, The Villager in NYC and various publications in Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

. Selected reviews are posted on the Purple Circuit.

Principal plays

• And He Made A Her (Caffe Cino, NYC, 1961)
• Babel Babel Little Tower (Caffe Cino, NYC, 1961)
• Now She Dances! (One act version: Caffe Cino, NYC, 1961; full-length version: Flexible Deadlock, Glasgow, Scotland, 2000)
• Pretty People (Caffe Cino, NYC, 1961)
• Some People Are (opera libretto for Walter Torgerson, 1966)
• In Absence (45th Street Playhouse, NYC, 1968)

• The West Street Gang (TOSOS, Spike Bar, NYC, 1977)
• A Perfect Relationship (The Glines, NYC, 1978)
• Turnabout (under pseudonym Howard Aldon) (Richland Players, Washington, 1980)
• Forever After (The First Gay American Arts Festival, NYC, 1980)
• Street Theater (Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco, 1982; Meridian Theater, The Mineshaft, NYC, 1983)

Publishing

United Stages has published Now She Dances!; Street Theater; and And He Made a Her (which includes a CD of the original 1961 Caffe Cino performance). Earlier versions of Street Theater and A Perfect Relationship are published by TNT Press; Street Theater is also included in the Don Shewey edited anthology Out Front (Grove Press).

Awards and honors

• 2010 Honorary Golden Pineapple Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by NY Artists Unlimited.
• 2010 PassionFruit Award for Enduring and Continuing Pioneer Work in LGBT Theater, Fresh Fruit Festival
• 2009 Elected a member of the National Theater Conference:
• 2009 ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) Career Achievement Award
• 2007 Mark Finley presented Wilson with the Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards
  New York Innovative Theatre Awards
  The New York Innovative Theatre Awards were founded in 2004. These annual awards honor excellence in Off-Off-Broadway Theatre and help nurture and promote the Off-Off-Broadway community.-Mission statement:...
  
  . This honor was bestowed on Wilson on behalf of his peers and fellow artists of the Off-Off-Broadway community "in recognition of his visionary artistic contributions and unwavering dedication and character that helped shape the Off-Off-Broadway community."
• 1994 - The first Robert Chesley
  Robert Chesley
  Robert Chesley was a playwright, theater critic and musical composer....
  
   Award for Lifetime Achievement in Gay and Lesbian Playwrighting.
• Numerous "best play" honors, including: 1982: The Villager and the Chambers-Blackwell Best Play citations for Street Theater; 2002-3: oobr Award for A Perfect Relationship; 2007: nomination of the 2007 Lambda Award for the revival of And He Made a Her.

External links

• Doric Wilson's website includes free download of his major plays
• TOSOS theater company
• Caffe Cino Picture Pages includes many images of Wilson and his work
• 2 Part Interview of DORIC WILSON by WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN on this page at [FOURTEEN.
• N.Y. Times: Doric Wilson, Playwright and Mainstay of Gay Theater, Dies at 72