The Theater Experience

The ideal theater appreciation text for courses focusing on theater elements, The Theater Experience encourages students to be active theater-goers as they learn about the fundamentals of a production. By addressing the importance of the audience, Wilson brings the art of performance to life for students who may have little experience with the medium.

Ed Wilson attended Vanderbilt, the University of Edinburgh, and Yale University where he received the first Doctor of Fine Arts degree awarded by Yale. He has taught at Vanderbilt, Yale, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Most recently he has been Executive Director of the Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author or co-author of three of the most widely used college theater textbooks in the U. S. The tenth edition of his pioneer book, The Theater Experience, was published in 2006 by McGraw-Hill. The sixth edition of his text Theater: The Lively Art (co-authored with Alvin Goldfarb) will be published by McGraw Hill in theDecember, 2006. The fourth edition of his theater history, Living Theatre: Histories of Theatre, (also co-authored with Alvin Goldfarb) will be published in December, 2006. He is also the editor of Shaw on Shakespeare, recently re-issued by Applause Books.

He has produced plays on and off Broadway and served one season as the resident director of the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. He also produced a feature film, The Nashville Sound, recently made available on DVD. He is the author of two original plays, a farce, The Bettinger Prize, and a play about Ponce de Leon, Waterfall. He wrote the book and lyrics for a musical version of Great Expectations. All three have been given a series of successful readings in New York City and elsewhere. Great Expectations was given a full production for three weeks in February and March, 2006, at the Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanoke, Virginia. He conceived the idea of a musical revue of the songs of Jerome Kern which had a well-received try-out production in the fall of 2004 at Catholic University in Washington, D. C.

Ed has served a number of times on the Tony Nominating Committee and the Pulitzer Prize Drama Jury, most recently on the Pulitzer Jury in 2003. For twenty two years he was the theater critic of the Wall Street Journal. A long time member of the New York Drama Critics Circle, he was president of the Circle for several years. He is on the board of the John Golden Fund and was also for many years on the Board of the Theater Development Fund, of which he served as President.