Wings is a 1978 play by AmericanplaywrightArthur Kopit. Originating as a radio play, it was later adapted for stage and screen.
In 1976, Kopit was commissioned to write an original radio play by the NPR drama project Earplay. Just prior, his father suffered a debilitating stroke, which inspired Kopit to write the play about the language disorder and psychological perspective of a stroke victim. The female character of the play is an amalgam of two women who were both patients at the rehab center that cared for his father.
Wings opened at the Off-Broadway New York Shakespeare Festival Public/ Newman Theater, presented by Joseph Papp, on June 21, 1978 for a limited run to July 2, 1978. This was the Yale Rep production with the same cast and creatives.[3][4]
Wings opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre on January 28, 1979 and closed on May 5, 1979 after 113 performances and 6 previews.[5]
The cast and crew was as follows:
Richard Eder wrote in The New York Times: "Wings is a remarkable attempt to dramatize the agony of a stroke victim. It presents [a] mind whose language has been knocked out from under it; one that struggles blindly, with alternating grace and terror, to regain its footing."[3]
Michael Billington wrote: "...this is a play about language – about Emily’s progress from a jumbled, disordered speech to one that achieves a wondrous coherence."[6]
The play was adapted into a musical of the same name with music by Jeffrey Lunden and book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman, which premiered at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in October 1992.[8][9]
