The author of Man of La Mancha, Dale Wasserman, since he has no birth certificate, does not know the date of his birth or even his exact age, . At about the age of twelve he started riding the rails as a hobo. Most of his "education" came from books he would "borrow" from libraries in the towns where the trains stopped and then "return" them at another town. He did manage one year of high school in Los Angeles.

At nineteen he gave up life as a hobo and changed to the theatre, working as stage manager, lighting designer — he invented lighting designs for dance companies which are still used — and, eventually, producer and director. At thirty-three he decided he could write better plays than those he was working on and left. It was the "golden age" of television, and he wrote over fifty works for that medium, as well as some two dozen stage plays and musicals and fifteen feature films. Other than Man of La Mancha (which he says is his most personal play) his most famous work is the play and movie script for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, based on the 1962 novel by Ken Kesey. For a while he was an executive at MGM and has directed abroad in cities such as London and Paris.

The essentially school-less Wasserman has refused several honorary doctorates but did accept one from the University of Wisconsin, maybe because the ceremony took place one-fourth of a mile from where he had hopped his first freight.

Return to Man of LaMancha Home Page

Revised September 2007
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.