Jack Richardson was a playwright who burst onto the New York theatrical scene in the early 1960s.
His original ambition was to be a tap dancer, and he had a small role in a road company of Pal Joey. He enlisted in the Army after graduating from Collegiate High School in Manhattan, and served in Frankfurt and Paris writing items about soldiers for their hometown newspapers. In his spare time, he studied philosophy and fine arts at the University of Paris.
After his discharge as a private first class, he studied philosophy at Columbia and graduated summa cum laude. In 1957 he received a Konrad-Adenauer Fellowship to study philosophy at the University of Munich. He returned to New York with the conviction that important ideas could be more effectively conveyed onstage than in the classroom.
Mr. Richardson’s first play, The Prodigal, a reimagining of Euripides’ drama Orestes, was produced off Broadway in 1960 and won Obie and Drama Desk awards.
Two of Mr. Richardson’s plays were produced on Broadway: Lorenzo in 1963 and Xmas in Las Vegas in 1965, but both closed after four performances.

Source: The New York Times