Artist Profile
Arthur Laurents made his name as the author of plays such as Home Of The Brave (1945) and The Time Of The Cuckoo (1952) before collaborating with Steven Sondheim on the libretto for West Side Story (1957). They collaborated again in 1959 on Gypsy, Anyone Can Whistle (1964) and Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965). Laurents made his debut as a musical director in 1962 with I Can Get It For You Wholesale. His staging of La Cage Aux Folles won him a Tony Award in 1983. He then launched into the creation of a series of plays, Jolson Sings Again (1995), The Radical Mystique (1996), My Good Name (1997), and Two Lives. Other notable contributions to the straight theatre include Invitation To A March (1960), The Way We Were (1973), Scream, A Clearing In The Woods (1957), and The Enclave (1973). Laurents wrote screenplays for The Snake Pit (1948), Rope (1948), Caught (1948), Anna Lucasta (1949), Anastasia (1956), Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and The Turning Point (1977). In 1995, the York Theatre Company presented Laurents with its sixth annual Oscar Hammerstein II Award. He has been honored with a Golden Globe, Drama Desk, National Board of Review, Writers Guild of America, National Institute of Arts and Letters, Screen Writers Guild, Sydney Drama Critics award and inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.