SOURCE: Busby, Mark. “Lanford Wilson.” In Lanford Wilson, edited by Wayne Chatterton and James H. Maguire, pp. 5-52. Boise, Idaho: Boise State University, 1987.

In the following essay, Busby discusses Wilson's Midwestern roots as inspiration for his plays.

Vincent, the main character in Lanford Wilson's first Broadway play, The Gingham Dog, explains that he left his small Kentucky town for New York because he was “sick of small people—ambitions—hopes—small hopelessness,” and he thought that New Yorkers “could comprehend something outside themselves, respond.” It was perhaps a similar attraction that brought Lanford Wilson from a small farm near Ozark, Missouri, to the bright lights of the Great White Way, but just as Vincent eventually discovers, Wilson learned that continuing connections with one's region remain. He also knows that coming home is not always wrapped in comfortable nostalgia. Nonetheless, some of Lanford Wilson's greatest successes as a playwright...