Pulitzer Prize Winner — Page 2

the pulitzer board is basically journalists, either in management or academia. this has to be one of the more challenging categories for them ...

that said: why ignore your own panel of experts in an area that challenges you?

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Margo I really hate to say it, but I disagree with you. It's an adaptation. They paid for the rights. They put it underneath their names. It's okay, or at least it should be. (I think it should be.) I'm sure there were bits from Tales of the South Pacific that are word for word in South Pacific. Oklahoma!'s (which recieved I believe a special citation in 1943) dialouge, while brilliant, if often Lynn Riggs with some Hammerstein thrown in with the exception of several things he completely invented. I'm not saying Rabbit Hole was bad. It was enjoyable and was a safe pick. Grey Gardens would have been a bolder move.

Only the first act of GREY GARDENS was eligible. The second act is mostly verbatim the documentary - i,e, the dialogue was not written by a writer. TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC was a book. OKLAHOMA! wasn't eligible because it was based on an existing play...

Apples and Oranges...

The reason OKLAHOMA got a "special citation" and not the prize itself is that it took dialogue word for word from the play GREEN GROW THE LILACS. Play adaptations have always been frowned upon by the committee, but in this instance, they decided to throw OKLAHOMA a minor citation (which doesn't exist anymore) because of its unique and revolutionary synthesis of song, dance and choreography to tell the same story. By the same token, GREY GARDENS by borrowing so much dialogue from its source material was almost certainly ineligible for the top prize. The board doesn't give out special citations anymore (or at least hasn't in decades and besides I'd hardly call anything in GREY GARDENS "revolutionary" to the art of theatre), so GREY GARDENS was simply out of luck as far as the Pulitzer was concerned.

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Updated On: 4/16/07 at 03:39 PM

Eckert is a very promising up-and-coming young avant garde playwright and composer best known for his Obie winning AND GOD CREATED GREAT WHALES a few seasons ago. I don't know his OEDIPUS X.

ELLIOT, A SOLDIER'S FUGUE is also by a very young promising writer that played at the Culture Project last year and was a highly original poetic anti-war work that was critically lauded (I think it was nominated as Best Play at one of the main off-Broadway awards).

I am not familar with BULRUSHER by Eisa Davis.

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Updated On: 4/16/07 at 03:50 PM

"Lindsay-Abaire's FUDDY MEERS and KIMBERLY AKIMBO are far more accomplished and clever works that RABBIT HOLE, that displayed a unique artistic voice missing from the latter work, so OF COURSE the Pulitzer honors this play"

I totally agree, also, I don't know who were the other nominees, but if "Rabbit Hole" won, I truly think it must have been a slow year.

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To complete the mainstream-reviews trifecta: Orpheus X hasn't played in New York, so here's the Boston Globe review (by Ed Siegel) from last March's production at A.R.T.
Orpheus X - Boston Globe review

At least it wasn't Spring Awakening! Amen!

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I, for one, am thrilled Rabbit Hole won.

Was it perfect? No.

But it WAS, in my opinion, the best new play of last season.

I can't wait to see the film version.

Just so you know, that link doesn't work.

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