Other Works

Other works by Baitz include The End of the Day (1992), a bleak but comically wry account of an opportunistic doctor running a public clinic whose patients are dying, mostly of AIDS.

Sponsor Message.

A Fair Country (1996), a reworking of material that initially appeared in Dutch Landscape, focuses on an affluent American family trying to make emotional and moral sense of their lives in South Africa. Baitz was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play.

Baitz collaborated with Terrence McNally on the play House, which was first presented in 1998. He also wrote a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, which premiered in 1999 in Los Angeles, starring Annette Bening. Additionally, he has written several one-act plays, often to raise money for charitable events, including Coq au Vin (1994), Show People (2002), and My Beautiful Goddamn City (2004).

Baitz has also written episodes for such popular television series as Alias and The West Wing. He co-scripted, with Howard A. Rodman, the teleplay The Frightening Frammis, which was broadcast in 1993 as part of the anthology television series Fallen Angels, and directed by the actor Tom Cruise.

Baitz wrote the screenplay for the 2002 film People I Know, a satire on fame directed by Daniel Algrant and starring Al Pacino as a once-high-powered publicist.

Baitz is also the creator and executive producer of the television drama Brothers & Sisters, which debuted in 2006. The hour-long show, which has received enthusiastic reviews and a strong following, centers on a politically diverse California family and prominently features an out gay lawyer and his life partner.

As an actor, Baitz has appeared in Henry Jaglom's Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995) as a successful, young gay playwright; as Michelle Pfeiffer's assistant in the romantic comedy One Fine Day (1996), also starring George Clooney; and again in Jaglom's 2006 film, Hollywood Dreams.

He is the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Baitz currently resides in New York City.

After Stonewall, gay male literature became focused as a movement, aided by the development of gay newspapers, magazines, and quarterlies and the founding of serious gay and lesbian bookstores.

American television has made significant strides in its portrayal of homosexuals in dramatic series and movies, but cable networks have been more daring than the "big three" broadcast networks.

Since Stonewall, gay and lesbian drama has flourished, especially in the United States.

Although few gay actors have been permitted the luxury of openness, many of them have challenged and helped reconfigure notions of masculinity and, to a lesser extent, of homosexuality.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual film directors have been a vital creative presence in cinema since the medium's inception over one hundred years ago.

Although film may be a director's rather than a writer's medium, gay and lesbian screenwriters have made significant contributions to both mainstream and independent film.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual actors and actresses are among the elite of contemporary theater, but only recently have many come out publicly.

Highly-acclaimed actor Nathan Lane is not only openly gay himself, but has portrayed gay characters in several plays and films.

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were known as the first family of the American theater, but theirs was a lavender marriage and their presentation of themselves as the ideal married couple may have been their greatest performance.

Having staged a variety of well-received and award-winning productions, actor-turned-director Joe Mantello has emerged as one of the most accomplished artists now working in the American theater.

Texas-reared Terrence McNally, whose first play, And Things That Go Bump in the Night, was one of the great scandals of the 1964 New York season, emerged in the 1990s as America's most important gay playwright since Tennessee Williams.

The works of award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and librettist Doug Wright often focus on the unconventional lives of society\'s outsiders.