Richard Nelson's plays have been produced on Broadway, off-Broadway, in the West End, by numerous national theatres across Europe, and at major theaters in Japan, Israel, and Russia. Ten of his plays have been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he is an Honorary Associate Artist. He has directed productions of his plays in the U.S. and the U.K.
He has written a cycle of plays for the Public Theatre including Sorry, Sweet and Sad, and That Hopey Changey Thing. Hisother plays include Farewell to the Theatre (staged in its March 2012 world premiere by Hyde Park on Hudson director Roger Michell), Nikolai and the Others, Conversations in Tusculum, How Shakespeare Won the West, Frank's Home, Rodney's Wife, Franny's Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere, The General From America, New England, Misha's Party (with Alexander Gelman), Columbus or the Discovery of Japan, Two Shakespearean Actors, Some Americans Abroad, Left, Life Sentences,and Principia Scriptoriae.
Mr. Nelson has written the musicals Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano (with Peter Golub), James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), and My Life with Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon). He has written numerous translations as well as co-translated a series of Russian classical plays with the eminent translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. He adapted Edith Wharton's novel Ethan Frome into a feature screenplay; the movie, directed by John Madden, starred Liam Neeson and Patricia Arquette.
His honors include a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical, for James Joyce's The Dead) and Olivier Award (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere); two more Tony nominations (Best Play, for Two Shakespearean Actors, andBest Score, as co-lyricist for James Joyce's The Dead) and another Olivier nomination (Best Comedy, for Some Americans Abroad); two Obie Awards, a Lucille Lortel Award, a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila Wallace-Readers' Digest Writers Award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters award; and the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award.
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