bio







EDWARD CROSBY WELLS (Playwright) has had scores of plays produced from coast to coast in the U.S. and in Scotland and Spain. He is the winner of no less than half a dozen international playwriting awards. Mr. Wells has won the Spotlight On Best Play Award for Excellence in Off-Off Broadway Theatre three times. His work is published by Greyridge Press, Smith and Kraus, Inc., Meriwether Publishing Ltd., Samuel French, Inc. and his essay, "On the Art of Playwriting," was published in the November 2008 issue of The Loop. He is a member of the Dramatists' Guild of America.

Among those who have produced the work of Mr. Wells are Circle Repertory Company (NYC), The Greenwich House Theatre (NYC), Mesa College (San Diego), PEOPLE*S Theater of Chicago, New Mexico Rep, Amarillo Rep, Dallas Museum of Art, Tony Award-winning The Glines (NYC), Wings Theatre (NYC), Iridium Jazz Club (NYC), Changing Scene and Vintage Theatre (Denver), Els Mullats (Barcelona, Spain), AYTB Productions (Boston), Upstage Theatre Productions (Glasgow, Scotland) to name but a few.

* * * *

"Edward Crosby Wells is an accomplished and original playwright whose varied works have gained growing esteem over the last few years. He shows remarkable and equal proficiency in comic, dramatic, and fantastic works. One never knows what to expect from each new play of his, except that they always show technical skill, poetic insight, and theatrical acumen."
-Robert Patrick, Drama Desk and OBIE Award-winning Playwright and author of Broadway's Kennedy's Children

"[Wells'] works are expertly layered and the characters are well thought out, portraying real people. He is equally talented with both comedy and drama. His dramas are beautifully crafted and engrossing and his comedies are arguably the funniest you will ever see."
-Frank Calo, SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCTIONS, New York City

"Wells' dialogue is snappy, clean and often very funny. He has a talent for writing lines for his characters that rarely miss their marks. Whether it is outrageous humor or cutting cynicism, Wells is always on target . . . . Wells shows talent for offbeat dialogue that makes heavy themes bearable."
-ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL

"Wells' dialogue is clever and witty."
-NEW MEXICO DAILY LOBO

"Brilliant dialogue."
-KDHX, St. Louis


Publicity Photo





THE LONG, RAMBLING BIO


I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to write. As I child I loved to read and so I began to understand the power of words early on. Also, my mother was a poet. So writing was probably in my blood, or perhaps it was infused into my blood by her way of punishing me. Whenever I did something not to her liking, she would have me write out a hundred or more times, "I will eat my vegetables," "I will not lie," "I will not throw my clothes on the floor," and so forth. When I got a little older sentences became a bit more complex; "I will remember that AN comes before a vowel and an A comes before a consonant." My mother died shortly before I turned twelve, so I can only imagine how the sentences would have been during my teen years, "I will not lock myself in the bathroom and masturbate?" I got my revenge; I flunked English that year and then again two years later.

I knew I was a writer, but was yet to learn of what. It began with dreadful poetry and then moved on to equally dreadful fiction. I had written and re-written the first couple pages of a novel through my Junior and Senior year. It was very Catholic and enigmatic. In hindsight I see the connection. Anyway, I couldn't seem to get beyond the first chapter. I was too self-conscious and every word had to be just so. Thank you, mother! I'm still too self-conscious.

After graduating high school I went into the navy and became a radioman on a submarine. That was fun for awhile. In the winter of 1964 I was stationed in New London, Connecticut and while on leave I went into the city. Being a native New Yorker, "The City" can only be one place�New York City. I met up with my best friend who was still living at home and we went to see a preview performance of Edward Albee's "Tiny Alice." It was a life-altering experience. I had never heard words constructed in such a manner as to open places within me I never knew existed. It was as if hearing the voice of God. When the play was over I remained in my seat, numb and exhausted. I turned to my friend and simply said, "I am going to be a playwright." And so it began. Albee led me to Beckett, Ionesco and Sartre. They were my early influences. Later on, Williams and Orton would be important influences.

After being discharged from the navy I walked right into pot, speed and LSD--otherwise known as The Sixties. Ten years went up in smoke! Did you know Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness on speed? I wrote lists of things to do.

I became an actor pounding the streets of New York, did some off-off Broadway, community and dinner theatre. Along the way I acquired a working knowledge of just about every aspect of Theatre--very important for the playwright. Most important because I could not hold a day-job, knew nothing about anything except Theatre. So that-s where I stayed.

I was a playwright who played at playwriting well into the Seventies when I was reading Proust and Gertrude Stein--amorphous and beautiful rambling meets obscure, unpunctuated literary cubism. If you haven't read Gertrude Stein, you must. As with the Cubists, she could show the front, sides and back of an idea all at once. She taught me how to think.

I wrote lots of what I mistakenly thought were "existential" plays right up till the late 1970's when all of a sudden I found my own voice and, for the first time, took my writing seriously and myself not so seriously.

I wrote a drama followed by a comedy then a melodrama, farce and on and on--never repeating the same genre twice, until I ran out of genres. I'm yet to create my own genre or even break new ground, but I'm not dead yet.



PLAYS BY EDWARD CROSBY WELLS

FULL-LENGTHS

3 GUYS IN DRAG SELLING THEIR STUFF
DESERT DEVILS
FLOWERS OUT OF SEASON
IN THE VENUS ARMS
STREETS OF OLD NEW YORK
THOR'S DAY
TALES FROM DARKEST SUBURBIA
THE MOON AWAY
THE PROCTOLOGIST'S DAUGHTER
POET'S WAKE
WAIT A MINUTE!
WEST TEXAS MASSACRE

ONE-ACTS

20th CENTURY SKETCHES
CIVIL UNIONIZED
CORNERED
EVENSONG
HARRY THE CHAIR
HELGA SCHMIDT'S PUSSY
LEAVING TAMPA
MISSING LUGGAGE
NEXT
PEDALING TO PARADISE
PINK GIN FOR THE BLUES
ROAD KILL
SALT
SAMSON AND DELILAH
SISTERS OF LITTLE MERCY
TOUGH COOKIES
VAMPYRE HOLIDAY

ANTHOLOGY

LAVENDER INK (4 Gay One-Act Plays)














Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1