Odd Pulitzer Winners- Page 2
Odd Pulitzer Winners
#25Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 10:10am
All awards are arbitrary, at least to some degree.
It's important to remember that unlike the Tony Awards, which consider 4-5 nominees across two-dozen categories, one Pulitzer Prize is issued, and the choice is made from more than a hundred candidates. Also, because the committee is always in flux, it is definitely subject to the whims of whoever happens to have a seat on the committee at a given point. And at the end of the day, the Pulitzer judges have the final word, which is how a work like Next to Normal can win the prize without even being among the finalists.
Arbitrary? Of course. But that's the nature of awards in general.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
perfectliar
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/1/04
#26Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 10:18am
Mr. Nowack said: "Alex Kulak was not musing on whether or not it won, but rather why it was selected since he thought it did't hold up against other winners. No it didn't win of course but it was still selected by the committee so I'd say it's just as valid to discuss it here alongside other committee selections, despite the thread title.
This is why no actual conversation happens on this board anymore. Gimme a break."
Or maybe it's because posters like you fly off the handle and resort to name-calling over really insignificant things, like fact-checking.
ScottyDoesn'tKnow2
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/22/14
#27Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 10:38am
The Pulitzer Prize, like all awards, are really dependent on the time in which the award was given (not exactly how the work survived after time has passed and in comparison to the authors' other work) and who is giving them and what the other choices were. The Pulitzer Prize Board seems to have a consistent members for a number of years as opposed to say the Cannes Film Festival that has a different jury and President every year, but it isn't a large membership pool like say the Academy Awards which has about 7000 members or the film industry awards like SAG which has about 25,000 members. The Pulitzer Prize Board being a smaller voting body tends to have choices that are really affected by the whims of the attitude of the people. But then having a smaller voting body may better ensure that there was more consideration in choosing.
As for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, I find the concept and themes to be incredibly relevant today and I do not find it difficult at all to see why it won the Pulitzer Prize.
#28Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 1:07pm
"fact-checking" is one thing, the OP's mistake was corrected (without snark) in the first reply. But to repeat it two other times is just being a know-it-all.
Does anyone have any real input as to why GUYS AND DOLLS was selected? Maybe it can just be accounted to a change in mindset or the whims of that given committee. Clearly they felt very strongly about it since they would rather have no award be given than choose anything else.
Keeping BroadwayWorld Illustrated
#29Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 1:13pm
green waver said: "What I find odd is the arbitrariness of the award, especially when you look at the creator's career. Why did Bock and Harnick win for Fiorello, and not Fiddler or She Loves Me? Sondheim for Sunday, and not Sweeny or A little Night Music? As with all other awards like this, I guess you could say that they're well intentioned... but capricious.
"
I don't follow awards all that closely, but of the two composers you list, their winning shows deal with American themes. Yes, SUNDAY starts with Georges and Dot in France, but Dot immigrates to the U.S. and, in Act II, George and Marie are definitely Americans (even when they visit Paris)..
green waver
Stand-by Joined: 11/3/16
#30Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 3:21pm
Gaveston, you may be right, but that distinction in itself seems like a very superficial means of separating the award winning from the others. Aren't we looking for more universal themes than that in our theater?
#31Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 3:47pm
FIORELLO and SUNDAY are both also original, though based on true events. Sweeney, ALNM, She Loves Me and Fiddler are all adaptations.
Keeping BroadwayWorld Illustrated
Rinaldo
Understudy Joined: 5/5/09
#32Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 3:50pm
green waver said: " Gaveston, you may be right, but that distinction in itself seems like a very superficial means of separating the award winning from the others. Aren't we looking for more universal themes than that in our theater?"
Universal themes, yes, but such things always come from the specific, and the requirement of the Pulitzer has always been clear in this respect. Sunday in the Park would not have been eligible without its Act II depicting the dilemma of a present-day American artist. The answer to the question "Why did Bock and Harnick win for Fiorello, and not Fiddler or She Loves Me? Sondheim for Sunday, and not Sweeney or A Little Night Music?" is a factual one: the one that won dealt with American life, and the others didn't. (Admittedly, Fiorello! looks like an odd winner now, as it didn't join "the canon" while the other two Bock/Harnick titles did. Still, the reasoning is clear.) Now if the question for Sondheim were "Why Sunday and not Company or Follies?", I wouldn't have a good answer, other than "it didn't look that way to people at the time."
#33Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 3:53pm
Rinaldo said: "Sunday in the Park would not have been eligible without its Act II depicting the dilemma of a present-day American artist. The answer to the question "Why did Bock and Harnick win for Fiorello, and not Fiddler or She Loves Me? Sondheim for Sunday, and not Sweeney or A Little Night Music?" is a factual one: the one that won dealt with American life, and the others didn't."
As has been previously stated, that the play/musical deal with American life is a preference, not a requirement. Ruined does not deal with American life whatsoever and it has a Pulitzer.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
ScottyDoesn'tKnow2
Broadway Legend Joined: 1/22/14
#34Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 3:58pm
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but although Sondheim's musicals were appreciated at the time, it wasn't until Sunday where people started talking about Sondheim as a legend and evaluated his entire body of work, with Sunday helping jump start that conversation.
Updated On: 3/10/17 at 03:58 PM
green waver
Stand-by Joined: 11/3/16
#35Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 4:03pm
Yes, AC, and The Diary of Anne Frank won in the Fifties. My gut tells me that when the Pulitzer Committee feel a play is original and overwhelmingly important, they bypass the American Life stipulation.
#36Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 4:25pm
The Pulitzer for Drama language states that the winning work is "preferably original in its source and dealing with American life." That gives them a lot of wiggle room to award things like How to Succeed or Hamilton, which do not meet the former, and Ruined, which does not meet the latter, or The Diary of Anne Frank, which meets neither.
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
After Eight
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/5/09
#37Odd Pulitzer Prize for Drama Committee Selections
Posted: 3/10/17 at 4:46pm
"but Dot immigrates to the U.S. and, in Act II, George and Marie are definitely Americans (even when they visit Paris).."
Good thing Dot's creators had her emigrate to America. It helped their miserable opus snag a plum prize.
But the fact is, the woman could have relocated to the Himalayan Mountains, the Amazon Rainforest, or an atoll in the South Pacific, and the wretched thing still would have garnered this deplorable award.
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