Craig Lucas

Playwright Librettist

Craig Lucas wrote the plays Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God's Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, The Singing Forest, Prayer for My Enemy, The Lying Lesson, Ode To Joy, I Was Most Alive With You and Death of the Republic.  His screenplays include Blue Window, Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless and The Secret Lives of Dentists. Lucas has written scripts for many musical projects including 3 Postcards, The Light in the Piazza , An American in Paris, Amélie, Nico Muhly’s opera Two Boys as well as two operas with composer Gerald Busby, Three Women (based on Robert Altman’s film) and Orpheus in Love. With Norman René and Suzanne Henry, Lucas created the musical anthology Marry Me A Little, a story told entirely in songs by Stephen Sondheim selected from his trunk songs. Lucas’ directorial work includes the films The Dying Gaul  and  Birds of America, the Harry Kondoleon plays Saved Or Destroyed and Play Yourself; also the world premiere of The Light in the Piazza  and his own plays Ode to Joy, I Was Most Alive With You and This Thing of Darkness. Lucas’s new English adaptations include Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, Brecht’s Galileo and Strindberg’s Miss Julie.

Highlights

Craig Lucas has three times been nominated for the Tony (Prelude to a Kiss, The Light in the Piazza, An American in Paris), received three Obie Awards (one for directing Saved or Destroyed, the others for Small Tragedy and Prelude to a Kiss), the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award (The Secret Lives of Dentists), Sundance Audience Award (Longtime Companion), the Steinberg New Play Award (The Singing Forest), the Laura Pels/PEN Mid-Career Award, the Greenfield Prize and the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the LAMBDA Literary Award and fellowships from the NEA, the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations. He has been a Pulitzer finalist.