Richard Wesley Biography
Richard Wesley is an American dramatist and screenwriter. He is an associate professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Rita and Burton Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing. He rose to prominence after his play Black Terror, which depicted a black revolt, premiered at the 1971 New York Shakespeare Festival.
Richard Wesley Age
Richard was born on 11 July 1945, in Newark, New Jersey, United States of America. He is 78 years old as of July 2023.
Richard Wesley Education
After graduating from high school, he attended Howard University to study playwriting and dramatic literature, earning a Master of Fine Arts in 1967.
Richard Wesley Family- Parents
Wesley was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, United States, to George and Gertrude Wesley, and raised in the Ironbound neighborhood.
Richard Wesley Wife- Spouse
He is married to his wife author Valerie Wilson Wesley.
Richard Wesley Career
He rose to prominence after his play Black Terror, which depicted a black revolt, premiered at the 1971 New York Shakespeare Festival. Clive Barnes, writing for The New York Times, called the piece a “winner” that “makes the case for and against black revolution.”Wesley won the 1971/1972 Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright for Black Terror, which accompanied with a $100 prize from Ticketron. In 1972, the Jarboro Company of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club toured Italy with Black Terror and five one-act pieces by Ed Bullins. In 1975, Wesley wrote and directed The Past Is the Past, a drama about a black man meeting his father who abandoned him years before.
Wesley penned the screenplays for Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Let’s Do It Again (1975), which starred Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier.[ His 1978 play, The Mighty Gents, tells the story of a gang who defeated its rival gang, the Zombies, and governed the Central Ward of Newark. The drama shows gang members in their 30s who are left with just memories of their previous success. His 1989 drama, The Talented Tenth, takes its title from W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1903 article, The Talented Tenth, which described the likelihood of one in every ten black males becoming black people’s leaders by furthering their education, producing books, or becoming personally involved in social change.
In 2013, the Trilogy: An Opera Company of Newark, New Jersey invited Wesley to write the libretto for Dorothy Rudd Moore’s opera Papa Doc, which was inspired on an essay by Edwidge Danticat from her 2010 book Create Dangerously. Autumn, Wesley’s first full-length play in more than 20 years, premiered at The Crossroads Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey. On November 12, 2016, Trilogy: An Opera Company launched Five, an opera about the 1989 Central Park Five jogger case in New York City, written by Anthony Davis with a libretto by Wesley. An enlarged version, The Central Park Five, debuted on June 15, 2019 at the Long Beach Opera Company in California.
Richard Wesley Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of 1 million dollars.
