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...
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...
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...
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....
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”...
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...
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...
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...
Ya gotta love a theater festival that starts with a cocktail party — especially the classy parties at wealthy supporters’ houses that light up the Thursday night start of the Humana Festival’s Special Visitors Weekend (formerly Critics Weekend, but that’s how it is for critics...
“Are you here for the show?” the guy on the elevator asked. Thursday night, around ten o’clock. Cold, rainy. I’d just driven down from Cincinnati and had barely enough time to check into the hotel before heading over to 21c (art gallery, hotel and performance space) for my...