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News & ArtsFriday, April 17, 2009
Theater How to Win a Pulitzer Prize
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 11:01 AM
David Cote, the well-loved theater editor of Time Out New York (really well-loved—he won a "critiquing the critics" survey), has a story in the Guardian about this year's Pulitzer for drama and some jaundiced advice for wannabe winners:
Two years ago, the conventional bourgeois weepie Rabbit Hole reaped the gold; in 1999 David Margulies's Dinner With Friends rode the petty neuroses of alienated spouses to glory... Make sure you have a large and boisterous cast (August: Osage County), moral ambiguity (Doubt) and racial politics (Topdog/Underdog). Be sure to say something provocative about American Identity or the Way We Live Now.
Read the rest of it here.
1
Maybe I'm hopelessly middlebrow or too much of an Americanist to be in on the joke, but those goals don't seem like bad aspirations for a work of art.
Also, these tidbits of advice don't necessarily run together. None of the plays cop to all of them, not even August: Osage County.
Are they "new" or "fresh"? No. But most of the stuff that is flat out sucks.
Also, these tidbits of advice don't necessarily run together. None of the plays cop to all of them, not even August: Osage County.
Are they "new" or "fresh"? No. But most of the stuff that is flat out sucks.
2
August: Osage County was very, very good. And it was born at a regional theater, Steppenwolf. Many of the other names Cote drops (Wit, for instance) were also terrific plays.
What's the problem you and Cote have with the Pulitzer, anyway? If theater can suck - and it can - the Puliltzer Prize isn't the problem.
What's the problem you and Cote have with the Pulitzer, anyway? If theater can suck - and it can - the Puliltzer Prize isn't the problem.
3
David Cote gave a rave review to a bloated piece of London trash called CORAM BOY. I've been unable to take him seriously since.
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