Mac Wellman

John McDowell Wellman (born March 7, 1945), is an American playwright, author, and poet. He is best known for his experimental work in the theater which rebels against theatrical conventions, often abandoning such traditional elements as plot and character altogether. In 1990, he received an Obie Award for Best New American Play (for Bad Penny, Terminal Hip, and Crowbar). In 1991, he received another Obie Award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award, and the 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.

Personal development In 1967 Wellman earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations at the American University, marrying his first wife, Nancy Roesch, the same year. Moving to the University of Wisconsin, he earned a master's degree in English focusing on poetry. After teaching several years, he sought professional renewal by touring Europe. In The Netherlands, Wellman began a collaboration with Annemarie Prins, a Dutch theatrical director/producer whom he had first met during his junior year in college, creating radio plays. In 1975 they directed a stage production, Fama Combinatoria, at Theatre de Brakke Grand in Amsterdam.

Discussing his style with BOMB Magazine, Wellman said that he uses words as objects in his writing. "I found if you try to write totally in cliches and things that don't sound right," Wellman clarified, "you deal with a language that frankly is 98% of what people speak, think, and hear. So it's enormously enjoyable." This type of language has been positively characterized as "an untrammeled flow of logorrhea: plain words, fancy words, space-age words, Victorian words and words that defy the dictionary" by The New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley. In terms of production, Wellman experiments with stage direction. Some directions are spoken and others are not, blurring the line between action and direction. Wellman notes, "That's something I'm really interested in. I like it when people talk about what's going on in a play. Sometimes it's more interesting than trying to enact everything." He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1990, he received an Obie Award for Best New American Play (for Bad Penny, Terminal Hip, and Crowbar). In 1991, he received another Obie Award for Sincerity Forever. He has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award, and most recently the 2003 Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement, as well as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2003). He is a co-founder of The Flea Theater in New York City.