NEW YORK CITY: The Pulitzer committee has announced the recipients of the 2019 Pulitzer Prizes. The Pulitzer Prize for drama, with a $15,000 cash prize, was awarded to Jackie Sibblies Drury for Fairview. This year’s drama finalists were Heidi B. Schreck for What the Constitution Means to Me and Clare Barron for Dance Nation.
During the awards ceremony at Columbia University, Pulitzer Prize administrator Dana Canedy described Fairview as “a hard-hitting drama that examines race in a highly conceptual layered structure, ultimately bringing audience into the actors’ community to face deep-seated prejudice.”
Fairview, which also won the 2019 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, premiered at Soho Repertory in a co-production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2018. The production will be remounted at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience June 2-30.
What the Constitution Means to Me is currently running on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre. It was described by the Pulitzer committee as: “a charming and incisive analysis of gender and racial biases inherent to the U.S. Constitution that examines how this living document could evolve to fit modern America.”
Dance Nation ran last year at Playwrights Horizons Off Broadway. It was described by the Pulitzer committee as, “a refreshingly unorthodox play that conveys the joy and abandon of dancing, while addressing the changes to body and mind of its preteen characters as they peer over the precipice toward adulthood.”
The Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 by Joseph Pulitzer and recognizes achievements in journalism, literature, drama, and music composition. The award is administered by Columbia University.
