Jack Richardson's most significant contribution to American drama has been his iconoclastic experimentation with paradox and such various elements of the theatre as existential situations, myth, historical settings, realistic staging techniques, the conventions of the morality play, and bizarre characters. Richardson is one of the few talented individuals who utilized the exhortation for rebellion and experimentation from the 1960s to produce a brand of theatre that is both good and unique.

Jack Carter Richardson was born to Arthur and Marjorie Richardson in New York City. Immediately after graduation in 1951 from Collegiate School, a high school in New York City, he acted in summer stock at the Grist Mill Playhouse in Andover, New Jersey, and in the fall studied acting for three months at the American Theatre Wing in New York. He found, though, that his talent was limited. He enlisted in the army, where he served from 1951 to...