Craig Lucas – författare

"Irresistible . . . intoxicating. . . . Enduringly original sensibility."—New York Times

Adele is a painter and an addict. Through her eyes, we meet her two lovers, Mala and Bill, and follow her destructive relationships over the course of fourteen years. A vulnerable exploration of the interplay between art, love, and addiction, Ode to Joy is an affecting new drama from respected playwright Craig Lucas.

Renowned playwright Craig Lucas''s newest work is a sensitive look at illness, addiction, and love.

Craig Lucas''s plays include Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God''s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Small Tragedy, Prayer for My Enemy, The Singing Forest, and the book for the The Light in the Piazza (music and lyrics by Adam Guettel).

“The Light in the Piazza beautifully captures the eternal allure of Italy. . . . The story wraps itself around your heart.”—Chicago Sun-Times

“Guettel’s music and lyrics take nothing from the razzle-dazzle bargain basement of feeling; they represent, instead, a genuine expense of spirit. . . . The Light in the Piazza doesn’t want to make theatre-goers feel good; it wants to make them feel deeply.”—The New Yorker

“With Adam Guettel’s gorgeous melodies, a compelling narrative hook from Craig Lucas, and moving themes about happiness and risk, there’s no question that The Light in the Piazza is Broadway worthy.”—Daily Variety

Composer Adam Guettel, best known for his Floyd Collins, has teamed with Prelude to a Kiss playwright Craig Lucas to create a passionate and soaring new musical based on Elizabeth Spencer’s 1960 novella, which was first published as an entire issue of The New Yorker. It is the story of an American ingénue abroad, whose chance meeting of a charming young Italian in a Florentine piazza sets off a whirlwind romance—with an unsettling revelation. The Light in the Piazza opens on Broadway at the Lincoln Center Theater this spring after major productions already in Seattle and Chicago.

Adam Guettel wrote music and lyrics for Floyd Collins, produced across the country and in London. His other works include Love’s Fire, a collaboration with John Guare, and Saturn Returns, a concert at The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival that was recorded by Nonesuch Records under the title Myths and Hymns.

Craig Lucas won this year’s Obie Award for Best American Play for Small Tragedy and the New York Film Critics Award for Best Screenplay for The Secret Lives of Dentists. His other plays include Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God’s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Missing Persons, Stranger, and Singing Forest.

“America the addicted. America the numb. America the war weary. America the lonely. All these countries compose the jagged terrain of this viscerally potent new play.”—The Seattle Times

“The very best we can hope for is to show the mess of life in such a way as to perhaps awaken our shared capacity for embracing it, in all its beauty and terror.”—Craig Lucas

Craig Lucas “can masterfully distill a world of hurt and perplexity into complicated relations and single, pithy lines” (The Seattle Times), which is never more evident than in his latest play of public and private turmoil in today’s America. Here we find the Noone family: son Billy returns from Iraq, his pregnant sister Marianne marries Billy’s friend and former lover Tad, his mother Karen tries to keep her husband Austin from falling off the wagon—all while the Red Sox and Yankees battle for the 2004 pennant. With Prayer for My Enemy, Lucas returns to the dark territory he has explored with earlier works, “bringing light and craft to previously unlit corners,” and illuminating the ways he is “one of the American theater’s best writers” (Variety).

Craig Lucas is a playwright, screenwriter, and director of both theater and film. His plays include Prelude to a Kiss, The Dying Gaul, Small Tragedy, Blue Window, God’s Heart, The Singing Forest, and the book for the Tony Award–winning musical The Light in the Piazza. He is currently associate artistic director at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle.

This volume combines some of Craig Lucas’ best known work, including Reckless ("a bittersweet fable for our time"—Frank Rich, The New York Times) and Blue Window ("…the clarity of a Mozart quintet. And it is faultlessly spun."—Dan Sullivan, The Los Angeles Times) with his newest play, Stranger. The three plays continue the author’s exploration of the nature of relationships in an ever increasingly distant society.

Craig Lucas is the author of Prelude to a Kiss, both a success on Broadway and as a motion picture, The Dying Gaul, God’s Heart, Missing Persons and Longtime Companion. He is currently at work on numerous projects for theatre and film.

Also available by Craig Lucas What I Meant Was: New Plays and Selected One Acts PB $17.95 1-55936-159-X • USA Prelude to a Kiss and Other Plays PB $16.95 1-55936-193-X • USA

"Full of itnerest, intelligence, amusement, and spine-chilling verity. . . . A play to see and ponder, staying with you, in typical Lucas fashion, long after you leave the theater."—Village Voice

An amateur production of Oedipus elicits social and political tension among its actors, generating meaningful revelations about tragedy in the contemporary world. Lucas''s topical and complex play is a remarkably funny, sharply articulated missive aimed at the heart of a generation.

Craig Lucas''s plays include Ode to Joy, Missing Persons, Reckless, Blue Window, Prelude to a Kiss, God''s Heart, The Dying Gaul, Stranger, Prayer for My Enemy, The Singing Forest, and the book for The Light in the Piazza (music and lyrics by Adam Guettel).