The Stage

Solo show wins Pulitzer

Published Monday 19 April 2004 at 17:15

One-person show I Am My Own Wife has been awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama - the first time a solo vehicle has been honoured.

Doug Wright, who penned the play, will receive a cash prize of $10,000, along with the award.

Based on the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite who lived through both the Nazi and Communist eras and who was also an informer for the East German secret police, the play opened off-Broadway last summer and transferred to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre in January.

The awarding of the Pulitzer to I Am My Own Wife is unusual, due to its non-American subject matter. The Pulitzer rules allow the prize to go to “a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source material and dealing with American life”. The play was apparently significant enough to the jury for them to overlook the preferential guidelines in awarding this year’s prize.

Prior to Wife, Wright was best known for his play Quills, about the Marquis de Sade, which won him an Obie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Playwriting and the Kesslering Award for Best New American Play. He later adapted his script for the screen, writing the screenplay for the movie of the same name, which starred Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet and Michael Caine. His screenplay was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

The two other finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama were Tracy Letts’ Man From Nebraska, about a middle-aged man having a crises of spiritual faith, and Omnium Gatherum by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, dramatising the incendiary conversations of a group of guests at a dinner party. Gatherum ran for a little more than three months Off-Broadway last fall, while Nebraska has yet to play in New York.

Named after newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, the Pulitzer Prizes are awarded annually for excellence in the fields of journalism, literature, music and drama. The Pulitzer Prize for Music was awarded to Tempest Fantasy, composed by Paul Moravec, while Walking to Martha’s Vineyard by Franz Wright won the poetry prize.

More information on the Pulitzer Prizes can be found at www.pulitzer.org.