small town in the rural Midwest and won the 1966/1967 Drama Desk Vernon Rice Award for contribution to off-Broadway theatre. It was first produced at La MaMa in 1966, under Wilson's direction. Wilson directed a revival of The Rimers of Eldritch at La MaMa in 1981 in celebration of the theater's 20-year anniversary. The Rimers of Eldritch was followed by The Gingham Dog (1968) about the breakup of an interracial couple. He returned to the O'Neill Theater Center to develop Lemon Sky in 1968. Wilson described Lemon Sky (1968) as "directly autobiographical". The play's narrator Alan, Wilson's representation of himself, describes his attempt to reconcile with his long-absent father. They fail to meet each other's expectations, and Alan leaves disillusioned by his father's authoritarianism and narrow-mindedness. Circle Repertory Company and later work (1969-2011) In 1969, Wilson co-founded the Circle Repertory Company with Marshall W. Mason, Tanya Berezin, and Rob Thirkield. Many of Wilson's plays were first produced at the Circle Repertory and directed by Mason. Also in 1969, Wilson was hired for $5,000 to adapt Tennessee Williams' short story One Arm, about a male hustler, into a screenplay. The day after he finished the screenplay, he was invited to a preview of Midnight Cowboy, and after seeing the film thought "there went that idea down the drain". His first plays at Circle Repertory, The Great Nebula in Orion, Ikke, Ikke, Nye, Nye, Nye, and The Family Continues, premiered in 1972. The Hot l Baltimore, about lowlifes who face eviction when the decaying hotel in which they live is to be demolished, opened in 1973 and was Circle Repertory's first commercial success. The play also won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and an Obie Award. It then transferred Off-Broadway to the Circle in the Square Theatre and ran for 1,166 performances. The Hot l Baltimore was adapted into a short-lived television series by ABC in 1975, which Wilson pronounced "a disaster". In 1974, Wilson acted in Circle Repertory's production of E. E. Cummings' Him under the direction of Marshal Oglesby. In 1975, Wilson's The Mound Builders, which The New York Times described as Wilson's "most ambitious work", premiered at Circle Rep. The play concerned an ill-fated archeological dig in the Midwest, and, thematically, contemplated the futility of man's achievements. Circle Repertory then produced Wilson's Serenading Louie in 1976. The play had been unsuccessfully performed in 1970 by the Washington