Pulitzer Prize for Letters - Drama

Submitted by admin on Mon, 05/04/2009 - 1:12pm

The Pulitzer Prize is named in honor of Joseph Pulitzer a newspaper publisher in the late 19th century. The awards were established in 1917 and are governed by the Pulitzer Prize Board and awarded by Columbia University. Awards are given in 21 categories for journalism, drama, music, and letters.

	2009 Lynn Nottage. Ruined
	2008 Tracy Letts. August: Osage County A portrait of a dysfunctional American family. When the patriarch of the Weston clan disappears one hot summer night, the family reunites at the Oklahoma homestead, where long-held secrets are unflinchingly and uproariously revealed.
	2007 David Lindsay-Abaire. Rabbit Hole A story of loss, heartbreak, and forgiveness-told through daily moments and emotional hurdles-as a family moves on after the accidental death of their four-year-old.
	2006 No Award Given
	2005 John Patrick Shanley. Doubt, a Parable In this brilliant and powerful drama, Sister Aloysius, a Bronx school principal, takes matters into her own hands when she suspects the young Father Flynn of improper relations with one of the male students.
	2004 Doug Wright. I Am My Own Wife Explores the astonishing true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. A transvestite and celebrated antiques dealer who successfully navigated the two most oppressive regimes of the past century-the Nazis and the Communists--while openly gay and defiantly in drag, von Mahlsdorf was both hailed as a cultural hero and accused of colluding with the Stasi.
	2003 Nilo Cruz. Anna in the Tropics
	2002 Suzan-Lori Parks. Topdog/Underdog A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity is Suzan-Lori Parks latest riff on the way we are defined by history. The play tells the story of Lincoln and Booth, two brothers whose names were given to them as a joke, forettling a lifetime of sibling rivalry and resentment. Haunted by the past, the brothers are forced to confront the shattering reality of their future.
	2001 David Auburn. Proof
	2000 Donald Margulies. Dinner with Friends
	1999 Margaret Edson. Wit At the start of Wit, Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a renowned professor of English who has spent years studying and teaching the brilliantly difficult metaphysical sonnets of John Donne, has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. Her approach to her illness is not unlike her approach to the study of Donne: aggressively probing, intensely rational, deeply witty. But during the course of her illness-and her stint as a prize patient in an experimental chemotherapy program at a major teaching hospital-Vivian comes to reassess her life and her work with a profundity and humor that are transformative both for her and for the audience.
	1998 Paula Vogel. How I Learned to Drive The 1950s pop music accompanying Li'l Bit's excursion down memory lane cannot drown out the ghosts of her past. Sweet recollections of driving with her beloved uncle intermingle with lessons about the darker sides of life. Balmy evenings are fraught with danger; seductions happen anywhere. Li'l Bit navigates a narrow path between the demands of family and her own sense of right and wrong.
	1997 No Award given
	1996 Jonathan Larson. Rent Rent captures the heart and spirit of a generation, reflecting it onstage through the emotion of its stirring words and music, and the energy of its young cast.
	1995 Horton Foote. Young Man from Atlanta In 1950s Houston, an affluent couple is transformed by tragedy when their son dies under mysterious circumstances and the husband loses his job of 40 years
	1994 Edward Albee. Three Tall Women Recovering from the brink of death after venting her frustrations about an unjust world, a ninety-two-year-old woman recounts three stages of her painful life.
	1993 Tony Kushner. Angels in America: Millenium Approaches Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.
	1992 Robert Schenkkan. The Kentucky Cycle An epic of 9 generations of two families in Kentucky.
	1991 Neil Simon. Lost in Yonkers A play about two young boys who are forced to live for a year with their domineering, ill-tempered grandmother while their father takes a job in another state.
	1990 August Wilson. The Piano Lesson Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson is a powerful new play from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. A sister and brother fight over a piano that has been in the family for three generations, creating a remarkable drama that embodies the painful past and expectant future of black Americans.
	1989 Wendy Wasserstein. The Heidi Chronicles
	1988 Alfred Uhry. Driving Miss Daisy The story of Daisy, a Jewish woman in Atlanta, and her African-American driver Hoke and the friendship that develops between them over the years.
	1987 August Wilson. Fences The story of Troy, astrong black man who tries to keep up with the times, but can't escape his father's grip.
	1986 No Award given
	1985 Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and James Lapine (book). Sunday in the Park with George A musical about the pointillist painter George Seurat.
	1984 David Mamet. Glengarry Glen Ross Business is not going well at a real estate office, then a daring robbery changes everything.
	1983 Marsha Norman. ’Night Mother
	1982 Charles Fuller. A Soldier’s Play
	1981 Beth Henley. Crimes of the Heart Deeply touching play about three eccentric sisters from a small Southern town rocked by scandal when Babe, the youngest, shoots her husband. Humor and pathos abound as the sisters unite with an intense young lawyer to save Babe from a murder charge.
	1980 Lanford Wilson. Talley’s Folly
	1979 Sam Shepard. Buried Child
	1978 Donald L. Coburn. The Gin Game
	1977 Michael Cristofer. The Shadow Box
	1976 Michael Bennett (conceived, choreographed and directed), James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante (book), Marvin Hamlisch (music), and Edward Kleban (lyrics). A Chorus Line
	1975 Edward Albee. Seascape
	1974 No Award given
	1973 Jason Miller. That Championship Season
	1972 No Award given
	1971 Paul Zindel. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds Focuses on the ups and downs of the relationship between an embittered, eccentric woman and her two teenage daughters.
	1970 Charles Gordone. No place To Be Somebody
	1969 Howard Sackler. The Great White Hope
	1968 No Award given
	1967 Edward Albee. A Delicate Balance A dark comedy about unfulfilled lives, broken promises, and family jealousies.
	1966 No Award given
	1965 Frank D. Gilroy. The Subject Was Roses
	1964 No Award given
	1963 No Award given
	1962 Frank Loesser and Abe Burrows. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
	1961 Tad Mosel. All the Way Home
	1960 Jerome Weidman and George Abbott (book), Jerry Bock (music), and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics). Fiorello!
	1959 Archibald MacLeish. J.B. A play in verse that is a modern interpretation of the ancient Book of Job.
	1958 Ketti Frings. Look Homeward Angel
	1957 Eugene O’Neill. Long Day’s Journey Into Night This play is O'Neill's autobiographical masterpiece which he would not allow to be published until after his death. Set on a single day in August 1912, the play traces the disintegration of the Tyrone family.
	1956 Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich. Diary of Anne Frank Based upon the book, the Diary of Anne Frank, it tells the story of the Frank family who hide in an Amsterdam attic to escape the Nazis.
	1955 Tennessee Williams. Cat On a Hot Tin Roof A story of deception which is destroying a patriarchal Southern family as its' members gather for the imminent demise of their "Big Daddy."
	1954 John Patrick. The Teahouse of the August Moon Okinawa 1946- occupied by American troops whose assignment is to bring democracy to the inhabitants. The captain in charge is a well-meaning but inept loser, and faces a wily oriental interpreter and a determined geisha girl, along with villagers who know how to take advantage of foreign occupation.
	1953 William Inge. Picnic
	1952 Joseph Kramm. The Shrike
	1951 No Award given
	1950 Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan. South Pacific
	1949 Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman The tragedy of a typical American--a salesman who at the age of sixty-three is faced with what he cannot face; defeat and disillusionment.
	1948 Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire The story of Blanche DuBois and her last grasp at happiness, and of Stanley Kowalski, the one who destroyed her chance.
	1947 No Award given
	1946 Russell Crouse and Howard Lindsay. State of the Union
	1945 Mary Chase. Harvey Elwood P. Dowd is a good-natured fellow whose constant companion is Harvey , a six-feet tall rabbit that only he can see. To his sister, Veta Louise, Elwood's obsession with Harvey has been a thorn in the side of her plans to marry off her daughter. But when Veta Louise decides to put Elwood in a mental hospital, a hilarious mix-up occurs.
	1944 No Award given
	1943 Thornton Wilder. The Skin of Our Teeth
	1942 No Award given
	1941 Robert E. Sherwood. There Shall Be No Night
	1940 William Saroyan. The Time of Your Life Joe, a lovesome, fast-talking regular at the local saloon believes in encouraging everybody in their intoxicating dreams.
	1939 Robert E. Sherwood. Abe Lincoln in Illinois
	1938 Thornton Wilder. Our Town The drama of life in the small village of Grover's Corners.
	1937 Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. You Can’t Take It With You Comedy about the Sycamores, an eccentric family of free spirits, and the problems that arise when Alice, the one stable member, falls for her boss's son.
	1936 Robert E. Sherwood. Idiot’s Delight
	1935 Zoe Akins. The Old Maid
	1934 Sidney Kingsley. Men in White
	1933 Maxwell Anderson. Both Your Houses
	1932 George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Ira Gershwin. Of Thee I Sing
	1931 Susan Glaspell. Alison’s House
	1930 Marc Connelly. The Green Pastures
	1929 Elmer L. Rice. Street Scene
	1928 Eugene O’Neill. Strange Interlude Drama about Nina Leeds, a possessive woman, and the six men whose lives she defines.
	1927 Paul E. Green. In Abraham’s Bosom
	1926 George Kelly. Craig’s Wife
	1925 Sidney Howard. They Knew What They Wanted
	1924 Hatcher Hughes. Hell-Bent Fer Heaven
	1923 Owen Davis. Icebound
	1922 Eugene O’Neill. Anna Christie The passion of a coal barge captain's daughter and a handsome sailor takes a tumultuous turn when secrets from her past are revealed.
	1921 Zona Gale. Miss Lulu Bett
	1920 Eugene O’Neill. Beyond the Horizon
	1919 No Award given
	1918 Jesse Lynch Williams. Why Marry
	1917 No Award given

Awards