Doric Wilson

Doric Wilson with the 2007 IT Award for Artistic Achievement

Doric Wilson (February 24, 1939-May 7th, 2011) playwright, director, producer, critic and gay political activist, was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles (CA) where his family were temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Wilson was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth on the Columbia River of Washington State. He wrote his first play for his English Lit class at Kennewick High School, but was accused of plagiarism when his teacher Miss Shrives informed him that no student of hers would ever be able to write a play.

Training

Doric Wilson received his early theater training under Lorraine Larson, apprenticed with Dorothy Seeburger and the Richland Players (WA), and studied briefly at the Drama Department of the University of Washington 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 (Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island) in Molière's Tartuffe and Older Patrick to Nancy Wilder's Auntie Mame 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 directing. The success of his four Cino Plays helped, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick, " establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway." His Now She Dances!, a fantasia on the trial of Oscar Wilde, was the first Off-Off-Broadway play to deal positively with gay people (1961). Under the mentorship of producer Richard Barr he 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.

Gay activism

A veteran of the anti-war and civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s-mid 1970s, Doric Wilson was a participant in the Stonewall Riots (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 Doric Wilson was honored to be one of the Grand Marshals of the 35th Anniversary Pride Day Parade in New York City. He is featured in the documentary film, "Stonewall Uprising" (2010), produced and directed by award winning film makers Kate Davis and David Heilbroner.

Gay theater

In 1974, Doric 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, Noël Coward, Christopher Hampton, Charles Jurrist, Joe Orton, Terrence McNally, Robert Patrick, Sandra Scoppettone, Martin Sherman and Lanford Wilson. In June, 2001, Wilson, and directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs resurrected the company as TOSOS II ([1]). The return of TOSOS has been met with critical acclaim and awards and has achieved a well-earned reputation for the talent and professionalism of its company. 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.

Doric Wilson's plays from the late 1970s: The West Street Gang (1977); A Perfect Relationship (1978); Forever After (1980); and Street Theater (1982) quickly became staples of the emerging Gay Theater circuit, widely performed here and abroad. He is currently working on two new plays, The Boy Next Door and Saints on a Secret Mission. Critic Tish Dace describes him as "a quintessentially urban dramatist... Doric Wilson specializes in stylish farce, ironic comedy of wit, and urbane satire... his combination of fantasy and whimsy and his intellectual dialectic suggests the touch of a Giraudoux or a Shaw... yet underlying his often caustic comedy is surprisingly romantic sensibility."

Criticism

Over the years Wilson has reviewed theater for Other Stages, The Villager in NYC and various publications in Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland (OR). Selected reviews are posted on the Purple Circuit ( [2] )

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)
Turnabout (under pseudonym Howard Aldon) (Richland Players, WA, 1980)
The West Street Gang (TOSOS, Spike Bar, NYC, 1977)
A Perfect Relationship (The Glines, NYC, 1978)
Forever After (The First Gay American Arts Festival, NYC, 1980)
Street Theater (Theatre Rhinoceros, San Francisco, 1982/Meridian Theater, The Mineshaft, NYC, 1983)
The Boy Next Door (concept in work, NYC, 2008?...)

Publishing

United Stages ([3]) 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 (Box 1243 Ansonia Station, New York, NY 10023); 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. This honor was bestowed on Wilson on behalf of his peers and fellow artists of the Off-Off-Broadway community "in recognition of his significant artistic contributions to the Off-Off-Broadway community and beyond."
• 1994 - The first Robert Chesley 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.

References & further reading

• Bottoms, Stephen J. Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement. 2004. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 2004.
• Carter, David. Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. New York City, New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004.
• Clum, John M. Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama. New York City, Columbia University Press, 1994.
• Crespy, David A. Off-Off-Broadway Explosion: How Provocative Playwrights of the 1960s Ignited a New American Theater. New York: Back Stage Books, 2003.
• Loughery, John. The Other Side of Silence. New York City, Henry Holt and Company, 1998
• Stone, Wendell C. Caffe Cino: The Birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
• Solomon, Alisa & Minwalla, Framji. The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater. New York City, New York: New University Press, 2002.
• Susoyev, Steve & Birimisa, George. Return to the Caffe Cino. San Francisco, California: Moving Finger Press, 2006.
• Trodd, Zoe. American Protest Literature. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

External links

• Doric Wilson's website includes free download of his major plays.
• TOSOS theater company
• Caffe Cino Picture Pages. Many images of Wilson and his work.