American playwright DORIC WILSON died on this date (b: 1939); Some people write for the “alternative” theater because they aren’t good enough for Broadway. Doric Wilson wrote for it because he was too good for the Great White Way. Wilson was one of the first playwrights at NYC’s legendary Caffe Cino, his comedy And He Made A Her opening there in 1961, with Jane Lowry and Paxton Whitehead in the leads. Other Cino productions followed, including Now She Dances! (one-act version), Babel Babel Little Tower and Pretty People (with Nancy Wilder and the celebrated mime Tom Lawrence).

A pioneer in the Off-Off-Broadway movement, he is completely committed to alternative theater and over the past 25 years has written, directed and produced more than a hundred productions. Such plays as Forever After, A Perfect Relationship, and The West Side Gang” make him not only “one of a handful of leading contemporary playwrights who deal frankly with the Gay experience,” but a satirist of the first water whose targets – hypocrisy, cant, and simply human foibles – are universal.