RICHARD NELSON’S plays include (besides the five in this volume) Rodney’s Wife, Madame Melville, The General from America, Misha’s Party (with Alexander Gelman), Columbus and the Discovery of Japan, Left, Principia Scriptoriae, Life Sentences, Between East and West and The Vienna Notes. His adaptations include Tynan (with Colin Chambers, based on The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan); Jean-Claude Carriere’s The Controversy; Strindberg’s Miss Julie and The Father; Chekhov’s Three Sisters, The Seagull and The Wood Demon; Pirandello’s Enrico IV; Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist and Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro. He has written three musicals—James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey), My Life with Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon) and The House of Bernarda Alba (with Michael John LaChiusa)—the screenplay for the film Ethan Frome, and the book Making Plays (with David Jones).

He has received numerous awards both in America and abroad, including a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce’s The Dead), an Olivier Award (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere), Tony nominations (Best Play for Two Shakespearean Actors; Best Score as co-lyricist for James Joyce’s The Dead), an Olivier nomination (Best Comedy for Some Americans Abroad), two Obies, a Lortel Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of The Royal Shakespeare Company, and lives in upstate New York.