The University of Missouri Theatre Department presents an interdisciplinary conference titled “Missouri Self-Taught: Lanford Wilson and the American Drama,” to focus on Missouri’s own Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Lanford Wilson. The conference will be held April 26-29 at Ellis Library and the Rhynsburger Theatre and features an MU production of The Rimers of Eldritch directed by Dr. David Crespy.

The conference and all the events scheduled are free and open to the public, with a goal to encourage students and scholars to avail themselves of the Lanford Wilson Collection located in the University of Missouri Libraries Special Collections and Rare Books.  Both the production of The Rimers of Eldritch and a new book edited by David Crespy, Lanford Wilson: Early Stories, Sketches, and Poems, have been supported in part through research in the Lanford Wilson Collection. The conference also features onstage interviews and master classes with guest artists Marshall W. Mason, Lanford Wilson’s Tony® Award-winning director; Tanya Berezin, the former artistic director of New York’s Circle Repertory Company, where Wilson’s plays were first produced; Danny Irvine, founding director of its Circle Rep Lab; and Mary Sue Price, an Emmy award-winning Circle Repertory playwright and protégé of Lanford Wilson.

A full conference schedule and additional information can be found on the Missouri Self-Taught conference website.