Author: ATCA

Drama Pulitzer, 5

In the dustup over the Pulitzer Committee’s decision to bypass the recommendations of its Drama Panel and give the drama award to (gasp!) a musical, Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey’s searing look at the impact of bipolar disorder on one American family, “Next To Normal,”...

Drama Pulitzer, 4

Some are wondering if Charles McNulty and other Pulitzer drama panelists should resign in protest. There is precedent. But actually, the jury is reappointed afresh each year — which is not to say that certain critics haven’t reappeared on it often, especially back in the...

Drama Pulitzer, 3

Mr. McNulty seems to have assessed the situation all too accurately. I am an unapologetic admirer of “Next to Normal,” but I certainly have to endorse the so-called coronation factor. I read “Chad Deity” as a recommended entry in the ATCA/Steinberg award process. While I wholeheartedly...

Drama Pulitzer, 2

Actually, the foolish choices for Pulitzer for Drama go back further and are more embarrassing than Leonard suggests. In the 1931-32 season, the Pulitzer went to Of Thee I Sing over O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra. By the sixties several unlikely musicals had won over significant plays (e.g., Fiorello over A Raisin...

Drama Pulitzer, 1

It was brave, decent and honest of McNulty to go public. Trouble is — as McNulty knows — the history of the drama Pulitzer has long had a whiff of the ridiculous about it. Yes, I’m back to Harvey and Glass Menagerie, and that old Woolf, as in Virginia, too....

Random thoughts by a Humana veteran from the 34th annual Humana Festival

Living in Louisville, I’ve been at nearly every Humana Festival except for the nine years I lived in San Francisco.  Festival number 34 was neither the best nor the worst but I wish it had offered at least one breakout piece such as “After Ashley”...

Cain Wins 2010 Steinberg/atca Award — Margulies And Zacarías Also Cited

March 27, Louisville, KY — Bill Cain’s “Equivocation” is the winner  the $25,000 2010 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. The largest such prize in the country, the Steinberg/ATCA recognizes the best American scripts which premiered professionally in the award year (2009) outside New York City. Playwright...

Humana: How much do you remember?

One of the 2010 Humana Festival shows is a collective work (with its roots in the brilliant folks from the now defunct Theatre de la Jeune Lune), Fissures (lost and found), an evocative, poetic piece about memory — teaching us, among other things that each time...

Humana at last

I’m finally doing something I’ve wanted to do for a long time — attend the Humana Festival of New Plays. I can’t wait to go home so that I can start planning on coming back year after year. This event energizes not only playwrights, producers et...