Lee Knowlton Blessing, perhaps best known for his play A Walk in the Woods, has been a major force in post-1960’s American theater. Blessing’s plays are considered by many critics to be truthful, often controversial explorations in the variances of human relationships. Blessing’s plays reach into the depth of human souls to find the underlying truths that bind people, no matter what their political viewpoint, sexual preference, ethnicity, or gender.

After Blessing’s birth in Minnesota in 1949, he spent his early years in Minnetonka, a Twin Cities suburb. Blessing, who described his childhood as quiet, was raised by his father, Frank, and his mother, Harriet. Frank Blessing was a salesman and businessman who eventually opened his own textile wholesaler firm. Harriet Blessing was a homemaker. Neither parent had attended college. Blessing’s parents were reluctant to endorse his career as a playwright but eventually were able to take pride in and enjoy their son’s theatrical accomplishments. Blessing had two brothers, Guy and Dean. Dean was killed in an automobile crash during college, an event that was later mentioned in the dialogue of Blessing’s play Patient A. Lee Blessing married Jeanne Blake, a writer and director, in 1986 and was stepfather to her two children from a prior marriage, Rachel and Andrew. Blessing and Blake divorced in 2000.

Blessing graduated from Reed College with a bachelor of arts degree in English. Later he received a master of fine arts degree in speech and theater as well as a master of fine arts in English from the University of Iowa in 1979.

Blessing’s first play, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, won the National Playwriting Award of the American College Theater Festival and opened at the Kennedy Center in New York City in 1979. In The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, Blessing presents an unexpected plot element in which Billy the Kid appears and introduces himself to a sheriff who, years before, was responsible for ending Billy’s life. This ability to twist a plot and present the theatergoer something unexpected would become a trademark device in many of Blessing’s plays.

Blessing’s marriage to Jeanne Blake was a catalyst for the playwright to explore different elements of his work that, prior to his association with her, he had not attempted. During the early 1980’s, Blessing assigned himself the task of writing believable women characters, resulting in the creation of four plays: Eleemosynary, Riches, Independence, and Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music, all of which would later be published in the collection Four Plays.

In 1987, Blessing once again used the unexpected to engross his audience in his highly acclaimed play A Walk in the Woods. In this play, two characters, American and Russian diplomats, meet over the period of one year in Geneva, Switzerland, to create a treaty for nuclear disarmament. Blessing takes this highly political and potentially terrifying subject and puts it immediately into human terms. He crafts an unlikely friendship and deep understanding between the two characters, who, while they do not arrive at a treaty or any real conclusions, leave the audience thinking of the great significance of humanity and the ironic certainty that humanity is the likely culprit of its own eventual extinction. The play was nominated for a Tony Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and an Olivier Award.

Throughout his career as a playwright, Blessing has made emotional drama from the stuff of ordinary people confronting the challenges of life. He was commissioned by the parents of Kimberly Bergalis, designated “Patient A” by the Centers for Disease...