His new English adaptations include Brecht’s Galileo, Chekhov’s Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, and Strindberg’s Miss Julie. His screenplays include Longtime Companion (Sundance Audience Award), The Secret Lives of Dentists (New York Film Critics Best Screenplay), Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless and The Dying Gaul, which he also directed. Last year Lucas directed the film Birds of America (starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Ben Foster, Lauren Graham, Hilary Swank and Matthew Perry). Onstage he directed Harry Kondoleon’s plays Saved or Destroyed at Rattlestick (Obie Award for Best Director) and Play Yourself as well as his own play This Thing of Darkness (coauthored with David Schulner) at the Atlantic.
He has worked with directors Bartlett Sher, Norman René, Mark Wing-Davey, Daniel Sullivan, Joe Mantello, Michael Mayer, Lisa Peterson and Anders Cato. His work has been seen on and off Broadway, and at such institutional theaters as Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Berkeley Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Circle Rep, Ensemble Studio Theater, Goodman, Hartford Stage, Intiman, Lincoln Center, Long Wharf, Manhattan Theater Club, New York Shakespeare Festival, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Portland Stage, Rattlestick, Roundabout, Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf, Trinity Rep & the Vineyard, and it is widely produced internationally.
Twice nominated for a Tony (Prelude to a Kiss and The Light in the Piazza), three times for the Drama Desk (Prelude, Missing Persons and Reckless), he has won the L.A. Drama Critics Award (Blue Window), the Steinberg/American Theater Critics Award for Best American Play (The Singing Forest), the Hull-Warriner Award (The Light in the Piazza), the LAMBDA Literary Award (for his anthology What I Meant Was), the Flora Roberts Award, the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Laura Pels/PEN Mid-Career Achievement Award and the Joan Cullman Award; he has twice won the Obie Award for Best Play (Prelude and Small Tragedy). He graduated from Boston University where he studied with poets Anne Sexton and George Starbuck. Lucas serves as Associate Artistic Director at the Intiman Theater in Seattle, and he is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Directors Guild, SSDC and PEN America. He lives in upstate New York.
Photo Credit: Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy