Linney was a playwright who roved along many intellectual paths, exploring the Southern Appalachian culture of his upbringing, refashioning classical works for modern times and adapting contemporary novels for the stage. Mr. Linney was a leading light in the more remote firmament of Off Broadway and regional theater. The Signature Theater Company in New York, which devotes full seasons to presenting the work of a single playwright, acknowledged this in 1991, when it chose Mr. Linney to be the first writer it would spotlight. He wrote more than 30 plays, many of them one-acts, some comic, some somber, wide-ranging in theme and content and often steeped in literary and historical references. Mr. Linney was one of many who adapted Dickens’s fable “A Christmas Carol” for the stage. His play “Unchanging Love” was a version of Chekhov’s short story “In the Ravine,” about the jealousy, rivalry and greed that undermine a village family, set in North Carolina of the 1920s. Mr. Linney spent many years teaching writing at Columbia, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Hunter College and Brooklyn College, among other schools. His Broadway credit, The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks, ran on Broadway in 1972.

Source: The New York Times