Steve Lawson (1949 - 2023) was a festival actor, director, and playwright. He attended Williams College before studying criticism at the Yale School of Drama, and developed a relationship with the Williamstown Theatre Festival that spanned more than 50 years, beginning in 1969 when, as a sophomore at Williams College, he wrote press releases and sold tickets. Then, in 1971, he played The Meddler in Cyrano de Bergerac, directed by Nikos Psacharopoulos. In 1972, Steve helped create Williamstown Theatre Festival’s “Second Company,” which was the precursor to the Non-Equity Company, a primary tenet of WTF’s training program for up-and-coming young actors. The Second Company did adventurous work, often by obscure writers, and with many emerging directors who went on to prominent careers. For the Second Company, Steve directed The Rat Trip (1972), Squirrels (1977), Wild Oats (1978), and David Mamet’s The Water Engine (1980). He went on to act in other Festival productions, including Summerfolk (1981), Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1989), and No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1990).
Steve also founded the wildly popular Free Theater program—outdoor productions performed free-of-charge that were adapted (almost always by Steve) from great literary works. The first was Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet featuring Alec Baldwin, Tim Daly, and Jennifer Van Dyck. From there, Steve’s other adaptations included Wild Oats (1989), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1990), The Moonstone (1991), What Alice Found There (1995), Hard Times (1996), and Dracula, or the Un-Dead (2012).
Steve’s passion for Tennessee Williams’ work led to an epic Tennessee Williams: A Celebration in 1982 which was a collage of 26 plays performed by many “family” members that summer. He also wrote two collections of Williams’ letters, which premiered on the Main Stage: A Distant Country Called Youth in 2002 and Blanche and Beyond in 2009.
In addition to his directing, adapting, and dramaturgy work at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Steve was the director of the Manhattan Theatre Club’s “Writers in Performance” series, artistic director of City Center’s new “Act 4: Great American Plays in Concert” project, and helped found and became executive director of the Williamstown Film Festival for 15 years. He wrote many projects for television, including St. Elsewhere, The Dick Cavett Show, an episode for American Masters based on the Group Theatre, an episode of Great Performances about Edith Wharton, and the television adaptation of The Elephant Man. During his 2000 MacDowell Fellowship, Steve Lawson worked on the adaptation of his first novel into a screenplay, Nobody Laughed Last.
Portrait by Jessica Katz
