Doric Wilson

Doric Wilson (February 24, 1939 – May 7, 2011) was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.

He was born Alan Doric Wilson in Los Angeles, California, where his family was temporarily located. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he was raised on his grandfather's ranch at Plymouth, Washington on the Columbia River. He wrote his first play at Kennewick High School, but was accused of plagiarism when a teacher informed him that no student of hers would ever be able to write such a play.

Wilson received his early theater training under Lorraine Larson, apprenticed with Dorothy Seeburger and the Richland Players, and studied briefly at the Drama Department of the University of Washington until he was forced to leave after he initiated a one-person protest against anti-gay sniper attacks at a nearby park.

Wilson moved to NYC in 1959 where he had a brief acting career playing such roles as Valère to the Mariane of Dawn Wells (later Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island) in Molière's Tartuffe and Older Patrick to Nancy Wilder's Auntie Mame in various stock productions. In 1961, he became one of the first resident playwrights at NYC's legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy, And He Made a Her, opened there with Jane Lowry and Larry Neil Clayton leading the cast and Paxton Whitehead directing.

The success of his four plays at Caffe Cino helped, in the words of playwright Robert Patrick, "establish the Cino as a venue for new plays, and materially contributed to the then-emerging concept of Off-Off-Broadway." His Now She Dances!, a fantasia on the trial of Oscar Wilde, was the first Off-Off-Broadway play to deal positively with gay people (1961).

Under the mentorship of producer Richard Barr, Wilson became a pioneer of the alternative theatre movement, dedicating his career to writing, directing, producing and/or designing hundreds productions. He was one of the first playwrights invited to join the Barr/Wilder/Albee Playwright's Unit and later became a founding member of Circle Repertory Company.

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