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John McDowell Wellman (born March 7, 1945), is an Americans playwright, author, and poet. Mac Wellman papers, 1959–1999. New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts. He is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. In 1990, he received an Obie Award for Best New American Play (for Bad Penny, Terminal Hip, and Crowbar). In 1991, he received another Obie Award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award, and the 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2003).
During the late seventies Wellman moved to New York City and married a Dutch journalist, Yolanda Gerritsen. Wellman continued writing poetry and plays, and in 1977 published a collection of poetry, In Praise of Secrecy, while in 1979 his play, Starluster was produced in New York.
Discussing his style with BOMB Magazine, Wellman said that he uses words as objects in his writing. "I found if you try to write totally in cliches and things that don't sound right," Wellman clarified, "you deal with a language that frankly is 98% of what people speak, think, and hear. So it's enormously enjoyable."Yablonsky, Linda. "Mac Wellman". BOMB Magazine. Fall 1995. Retrieved June 21, 2021. This type of language has been positively characterized as "an untrammeled flow of logorrhea: plain words, fancy words, space-age words, Victorian words and words that defy the dictionary" by The New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley.Brantley, Ben. "Review/Theater; Family Life Colored by Meance". The New York Times. May 20, 1994. Retrieved July 27, 2011. In terms of production, Wellman experiments with stage direction. Some directions are spoken and others are not, blurring the line between action and direction. Wellman notes, "That's something I'm really interested in. I like it when people talk about what's going on in a play. Sometimes it's more interesting than trying to enact everything."
In addition to several collaborations with composer/percussionist David Van Tieghem in the 1990s, he collaborated with Bang on a Can composer David Lang in 2006 on the opera The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, adapted from a very short story by Ambrose Bierce. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1990, he received an Obie Award for Best New American Play (for Bad Penny, Terminal Hip, and Crowbar). In 1991, he received another Obie Award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award, and most recently the 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2003). He is a co-founder of The Flea Theater in New York City.
Writings
Wellman's plays frequently resemble a moving collage of events which has more in common with an avant-garde dance production than Broadway-style theater. Wellman has stated, "More and more I think all theater is site-specific. When plays work, they work in the space." Helen Shaw wrote, "Since a 1984 essay, 'The Theatre of Good Intentions', Wellman has been the cynosure in a heaven full of experimental playwrights who rail against what Jonathan Lear, in his book Open Minded, called a 'tyranny' of 'the already known'."Helen Shaw. Mac Wellman and Things of the Devil. The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. vii–xii.
Professional credits
Wellman is the I. Fine Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College, New York City, and in 2010 he became a CUNY Distinguished Professor. Wellman is author of more than forty plays, including:
Bibliography
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