Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, actor, and theater and film director. Born April 30, 1951, Lucas was adopted at the age of 8 months by his father, an FBI agent, and his mother, a painter. Lucas graduated from Conestoga High School in 1969 and went on to study theater and creative writing at Boston University. Lucas left school in 1973, moving to New York City to begin his career as a playwright. While working on his writing, Lucas performed as an actor in shows such as Shenandoah, On the Twentieth Century, Rex and Sweeney Todd.
Lucas met Norman René in 1979, and the two would go on to become long-time collaborators. Their first show together was Marry Me a Little (1981), which featured discarded songs from Stephen Sondheim musicals. Their largest critical success came in 1990 with Prelude to a Kiss, which was later adapted into a film in 1992 starring Alice Baldwin and Meg Ryan. Prelude to a Kiss earned Lucas a nomination for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Many of Lucas’ earlier works were romantic comedies, however Lucas began to focus more on dramas as his career progressed. A proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, Lucas began writing about the AIDS crisis, including The Singing Forest and Dying Gaul.
Lucas wrote the book for the musical Light in the Piazza, and directed the world premiere at the Intiman Theatre in Seattle. The show went on to find great success and Lucas was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical from the Lincoln Center production, which was directed by Bartlett Sher. Lucas also holds Tony Award nominations for the books of Prelude to a Kiss (1990), An American in Paris (2015), and Paradise Square (2022). Lucas and Sher would become close collaborators after this, working together on Lucas’ Off-Broadway play, Prayer for My Enemy (2008). In 2014, Lucas provided the book for the King Kong the Musical premiere in Melbourne, but departed the team before its Broadway opening. In 2015, Lucas created the book for Amélie, a musical based on the award-winning film of the same name.
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