William M. Hoffman

William M. Hoffman (1939-2017) was the author of the play As Is, which pioneered the subject of AIDS on Broadway. It earned him a Drama Desk Award, an Obie, as well as Tony and Pulitzer nominations, and was one of Time magazine’s best plays of the year 1985.

Hoffman was the librettist of The Ghosts of Versailles (composer John Corigliano), The Cows of Apollo, or The Invention of Music (composer Chris Theofanidis), and the opera Morning Star (composer Ricky Ian Gordon).

Other credits include Riga, which premiered in Los Angeles. In collaboration with Anthony Holland he was the author of Cornbury: The Queen’s Governor, Shoe Palace Murray and After the Orchard. Some other plays of his are the comedies Chico de Jazzzz, Cyberian Nights, and The Stench of Art, adopted from Carlo Gozzi’s The Blue Monster.

Hoffman was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, three National Endowment Awards, ASCAP and Fund for New American Plays awards, two grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Erwin Piscator Award. His television work brought him an Emmy nomination and he received a Writers Guild award. Hoffman has written critically for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, and Vogue.

Hoffman was a professor of theatre at Lehman College, in New York City, where he was the Artistic Director of Conversations with William M. Hoffman, the award-winning interview show which he regularly hosted on CUNY-TV.