CRAIG LUCAS is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director, born on this date.

He was a foundling as an infant, abandoned in a car in Atlanta, Georgia and was adopted when he was eight months old by a conservative Pennsylvania couple. His father was an FBI agent; his mother was a painter. She was born Jewish but suppressed the identity, which Lucas relates in his storytelling. He graduated in 1969 from Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lucas became interested in the political left and discovered an attraction toward men. He is out gay, and recalls that his coming out made it possible for him to develop as a playwright and as a person.

In 1973, Lucas left Boston University with a Bachelor of Arts in theatre and creative writing. His mentor Anne Sexton urged him to move to New York City to become a playwright. He worked in many day jobs while performing in Broadway musicals including Shenandoah, On the Twentieth Century, Rex, and Sweeney Todd. Stephen Sondheim later told him he was a better writer than actor.

Lucas met Norman René in 1979. Their first collaboration was Marry Me a Little in 1981. The two wrote a script incorporating songs that had been written for but discarded from Stephen Sondheim musicals, and René also directed. They followed this with the plays Missing Persons and Blue Window; Three Postcards, an original musical by Lucas and Craig Carnelia; and another play, Reckless. 

In 1990, they had their biggest commercial and critical success with Prelude to a Kiss. They also collaborated for the feature film Longtime Companion (1990), the 1992 film adaptation of Prelude to a Kiss with Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan, and the 1995 film version of Reckless with Mia Farrow and Mary-Louise Parker.

Following his early work on romantic comedies, Lucas began to write more serious works about AIDS, including The Singing Forest (not to be confused with the film of the same name) and The Dying Gaul, the latter of which was made into a film that Lucas also directed. Lucas also wrote the book for the musical The Light in the Piazza, and directed the world premiere at the Intiman Theater in Seattle. The Lincoln Center production, directed by Bartlett Sher, garnered him a Tony Award nomination.

Lucas has also directed plays such as Loot. He directed Birds of America, a film starring Matthew Perry and Hilary Swank, in 2007.

He received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Laura Pels/PEN Mid-career Award, the Greenfield Prize, LAMBDA Literary Award, Hull-Warriner Award, Flora Roberts Award, Steinberg/ACTA Best Play Award among others. He has three Tony nominations and three Obie Awards.