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The 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winners – Drama
For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).
Awarded to “Next to Normal,” music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, a powerful rock musical that grapples with mental illness in a suburban family and expands the scope of subject matter for musicals. (Moved into contention by the Board within the Drama category.)
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in this category were: “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” by Kristoffer Diaz, a play invoking the exaggerated role-playing of professional wrestling to explore themes from globalization to ethnic stereotyping, as the audience becomes both intimate insider and ringside spectator; “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” by Rajiv Joseph, a play about the chaotic Iraq war that uses a network of characters, including a caged tiger, to ponder violent, senseless death, blending social commentary with tragicomic mayhem; and “In the Next Room or the vibrator play,” by Sarah Ruhl, an inventive work that mixes comedy and drama as it examines the medical practice of a 19th century American doctor and confronts questions of female sexuality and emancipation.
The Winner:
Next to Normal
By: Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey
To me, NEXT TO NORMAL is like an independent film. I love the honesty of its characters and the riskiness of its concerns. I love how one family’s crisis becomes every family’s crisis and how all the dirty laundry is left out for everyone to see.
I love the specificity and originality of the lyrics — which make directing and acting the play so vigorous and joyous, and so painful and rewarding. And mostly, I love the extraordinary music that expresses every idea and every emotion so perfectly and so profoundly.
It’s great to discover an original musical with so much intelligence and so much heart. I hope you love this recording as much as I have loved being a part of its creation. (Michael Greif, director – from liner notes to the recording)
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Bio:
Tom Kitt (on right in photo) received 2009 Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Orchestrations for Next to Normal, which had successful productions at both Second Stage (Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Score; Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Drama League nominations) and Arena Stage (nominated for five 2009 Helen Hayes Awards including Best Musical). He composed the music for High Fidelity (Broadway) and From Up Here (MTC), and his original songs have been featured in film and TV. He recently created new orchestrations for the CTG/DeafWest production of Pippin. As a musical director, conductor and arranger (Broadway and Off-Broadway), shows include 13, Hair, Laugh Whore, Urban Cowboy and Debbie Does Dallas. This spring, Tom will be the musical supervisor/arranger/orchestrator for Everyday Rapture at Second Stage, and his string arrangements will appear on the new Green Day album 21st Century Breakdown. He is the proud leader of The Tom Kitt Band.
Brian Yorkey received the 2009 Tony Award for Best Score for his work on Next to Normal and was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Theatre credits include Making Tracks, which has played Off-Broadway and regionally; the musical adaptation of Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet; and the new country musical Play It By Heart. Film and TV include the features Time After Time, in development at Universal with Marc Platt, and Sluts for Lionsgate and Furst Films; he is currently writing Love Undercover for Pandemonium Films and Overture, and Chase for Anonymous Content and Rosenzweig Films; and he co-created “Bears,” a new series for the Logo network. He has directed Off-Broadway and regionally, and for seven years was associate artistic director at Village Theatre in Washington state, one of the nation’s leading producers of new musicals. He’s a graduate of Columbia University, where he was artistic director of the Varsity Show, an alum of the BMI/Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop and a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the WGA
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Charles McNulty, drama critic, Los Angeles Times (chair)John M. Clum, professor of theater studies and English, Duke UniversityNilo Cruz*, playwright, New York, N.Y.David Rooney, chief theater critic, VarietyHedy Weiss, theater and dance critic, Chicago Sun-Times
