The Silence is Deafening

Does no one else think this is a big deal? The Pulitzer Prizes were awarded yesterday...to everyone but a playwright. There was no award given in the Drama category. There were nominees, but no winner. There were jurors...interesting ones at that. One of them taught a class I took at Columbia and another was a Commencement speaker at Columbia. But, no award. What is that about, I wonder?

So I went to the New York Times to find out what it was about...but there is no article on it at all. There is an article about all the journalism prizes that were awarded and a general article about all the winners. However, in the Theatre Section, no one wrote about the fact that an award wasn't given. That's just weird.

There is a short piece on Playbill.com, which always reads to me as dinner table conversation trying to be journalism. How seriously can you report about the casting of The Wedding Singer, after all? They say that those in the know predicted that they wouldn't be a winner this year because there was no "natural choice." I have no idea what that means, but I guess I'm not in the know, because I think it's a blow to American theatre. That there would ever be a year in which the jurors couldn't find one produced play which to give that award is sad. And apparently it happened before...less than ten years ago.