Craig Lucas

Craig Lucas, born April 30, 1951, in Atlanta, Georgia, is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, and actor whose work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, film, and opera. Abandoned as an infant and later adopted by a conservative Pennsylvania couple, Lucas grew up in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, where his father worked as an FBI agent and his mother was a painter who had been born Jewish but suppressed that identity. He graduated from Conestoga High School in 1969 and earned a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and creative writing from Boston University in 1973. His mentor, the poet Anne Sexton, encouraged him to relocate to New York City and pursue playwriting.

Before establishing himself as a writer, Lucas performed as an actor in Broadway musicals between 1975 and 1979, appearing in Shenandoah (1975), Rex (1976), On the Twentieth Century (1978), and Sweeney Todd (1979). Stephen Sondheim later told him he was a better writer than actor. During this period Lucas also became openly gay, which he has credited as essential to his development both as a playwright and as a person.

Lucas met director Norman René in 1979, and the two began a prolific creative partnership. Their first collaboration, Marry Me a Little (1981), assembled songs that had been written for but cut from Sondheim musicals, with René directing. They continued working together on the plays Missing Persons (1981) and Blue Window (1984), the original musical Three Postcards (1987, with composer Craig Carnelia), and the play Reckless (1983). Their most commercially and critically successful collaboration was Prelude to a Kiss (1990), which transferred to Broadway and earned Lucas a Tony Award nomination for Best Play as well as a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding New Play. He was also nominated for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for that work. Lucas and René extended their partnership into film, co-producing Longtime Companion (1990), the 1992 film adaptation of Prelude to a Kiss starring Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan, and the 1995 film version of Reckless with Mia Farrow and Mary-Louise Parker.

Lucas subsequently wrote the book for The Light in the Piazza, directing its world premiere at the Intiman Theater in Seattle. The Lincoln Center production, directed by Bartlett Sher, brought Lucas a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical in 2005. He received a second Tony nomination in that category for An American in Paris (2015) and a third for Paradise Square (2022), the latter co-written with Christina Anderson, Marcus Gardley, and Larry Kirwan. His Broadway book credits also include Amélie (2017), based on the 2001 film, with music by Daniel Messé and lyrics by Nathan Tysen and Messé, and Days of Wine and Roses (2024). Reckless received a Broadway production in 2004, and Prelude to a Kiss returned in a 2007 revival.

Lucas's work in film as a writer and director includes The Dying Gaul (2005), which he adapted from his own play and also directed, and Birds of America (2007), starring Matthew Perry and Hilary Swank. He won the 2003 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay for The Secret Lives of Dentists. His theatre direction earned him a 2001 Obie Award for his staging of Harry Kondoleon's Saved or Destroyed at the Rattlestick Theater, and his play Small Tragedy received an Obie as Best American Play in 2004. Additional honors include the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award, and awards from the Outer Critics Circle, the L.A. Drama Critics Circle, Drama-Logue, and the Lambda Literary Foundation. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Lucas also wrote the libretto for the opera Two Boys (2011) and lyrics for Orpheus in Love (1993).